Class. 

Book_ M ■ t- 

CopyiigM? 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



BY 

JOHN CALVIN METCALF 

Poe Professor of English Literature in the University of Virginia 
Arthor cf American Literature 




B. F. JOHNSON PUBLISHING COMPANY 

ATLANTA RICHMOND DALLAS 




Copyright, 1912, 1018. 
By B. F. Johnson Publishing Company. 

All Eights Reserved. 



6-18—F. & . 



AUG -I 1918 



©CU50J340 



TO 

MY WIFE 

WHOSE SYMPATHY 
AND 

INTELLIGENT INTEREST 
HAVE PROVED INVALUABLE 
IN THE 
PREPARATION OF THIS 
WORK 



Readings In American 

Literature 



BY 

JOHN CALVIN METCALF 

Poe Professor of English in the University of Virginia 
Author of American Literature 

AND 

HENRY BRANTLY HANDY 

Associate Professor of English in Richmond College 



Selections from the Writings of the best American Authors 
To be used as supplementary to the study of American 
Literature 



B. F. Johnson Publishing Co. 

RICHMOND, VA. 



PREFACE 



The writer of this volume has tried to furnish students and 
general readers with a clear and concise account of English 
literature and its makers from the beginnings to the present day. 
The influences of social and other movements on literary develop- 
ment have been brought out in the brief introductions to the 
chapters. The biographies set forth the important facts of the 
authors' careers without extensive comment. This is in accord 
with the present writer's conviction that much ready-made inter- 
pretation of conditions and motives, after the setting of an author's 
work and his characteristics have been made clear, is a hindrance 
rather than a help to students. Since literature is in a peculiar 
sense an expression of personality, an attempt has been made to 
sum up the personal traits of each prominent author in a para- 
graph or two. Wherever an author's contribution has proved 
epoch-making in literary history, that fact is given special promi- 
nence in a final summary. 

Throughout the book the writer has earnestly endeavored to 
keep the balance between external influences — movements, ten- 
dencies, environments in general — and the individual, recogniz- 
ing that the history of English literature is not simply a series of 
biographies on the one hand, nor a chain of "movements" on the 
other. As usual, the truth is doubtless to be found in the golden 
mean, but, in the writer's opinion, with distinct leanings toward 
the biographies. 

This work is designed to accompany a volume of selections 
from English poetry and prose, several of which are now easily 
accessible (see list of books following Introduction), or to be 
used with separate editions of representative classics from Beowulf 
to Kipling. In the earlier periods more illustrative extracts have 
been inserted, on the asssumption that the literature of these 

[51 



6 



PREFACE 



periods is not usually within reach of the average reader. Wher- 
ever, indeed, quotations seemed necessary to clearness, they have 
been freely introduced. Following each chapter is an outline- 
summary of the period, with leading characteristics, and a list 
of useful books, such as are likely to be available for high school 
and college students. 

This volume is in form and content the outcome of years of 
experience in teaching English literature. Whatever its defects, 
it at least has the merit of having been written with a definite 
set of individuals in view. In a time of many and excellent his- 
tories of English literature it is impossible, of course, for the latest 
comer into the field to lay claim to any marked originality. All 
the standard histories have been consulted, and the writer of this 
work acknowledges his indebtedness. He has, however, through- 
out this long literary journey steadfastly gone to the literature 
itself for knowledge and inspiration. To his colleagues, Professors 
R. A. Stewart and H. A. VanLandingham, who have read the 
work in proof, the author's thanks are due for helpful suggestions. 



Since this work was first issued, a few writers not included have 
become so well known and widely read that a supplementary 
chapter has seemed desirable. This chapter has accordingly 
been prepared for the new edition and will be found to contain 
a brief review of recent tendences in English literature and a short 
account of such authors as give promise of lasting fame. No at- 
tempt has been made to present an exhaustive list. 



University of Virginia. 



J. C. M. 



CONTENTS 



Introduction - 9 

I Anglo-Saxon or Old English Period 13 

The Land and the people 13 

The Pagan Poetry 16 

The Christian Poetry 25 

II Anglo-Norman Period 36 

III The Age of Chaucer. 53 

Geoffrey Chaucer ' 55 

Contemporaries of Chaucer 67 

IV Renaissance and Reformation Period 73 

From the Death of Chaucer to the Accession of Elizabeth.... 73 

V The Elizabethan Age _ 86 

The Flood Tide of the Renaissance 86 

Elizabethan Poetry (non-dramatic) — Edmund Spenser 91 

The Lesser Poets 98 

The Drama — Pre-Elizabethan Drama ...102 

The Elizabethan Drama Ill 

Christopher Marlowe 113 

William Shakespeare _ 120 

Contemporaries and Successors 138 

Elizabethan Prose _ 147 

Francis Bacon 150 

VI The Puritan Period _ 157 

The Age of Milton 157 

Poetry of the Puritan Period 160 

John Milton _ 172 

Prose of the Puritan Period 187 

John Bunyan 191 

VII The Restoration Period 198 

The Age of Dryden 198 

John Dryden „ 202 

VIII The Earlier Eighteenth Century .215 

The Age of Pope : Classicism _..215 

Prose Literature — Joseph Addison 219 

Richard Steele -226 

Jonathan Swift - 228 

Poetry — Alexander Pope. .235 

IX The Middle and Later Eighteenth Century 246 

Rise of the English Novel :,249 

Daniel Defoe - - 251 

Samuel Richardson.. .256 

Henry Fielding 258 



8 CONTENTS 

Johnson and his Circle 263 

Samuel Johnson 263 

Oliver Goldsmith 269 

Edmund Burke..... 273 

Beginning of Romanticism.. 278 

Thomas Gray 284 

William Cowper _ 287 

Robert Burns £90 

X The Triumph of Romanticism 300 

The Greater Romantic Poets 30? 

William Wordsworth , 302 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge... ......309 

George Gordon Byron 314 

Percy Bysshe Shelley.. 319 

John Keats 324 

The Minor Romantic Poets... 330 

The Novelists 332 

Jane Austen 334 

Sir Walter Scott 336 

The Essayists and Critics 343 

Charles Lamb 345 

Thomas De Quincey 348 

XI The Victorian Era 356 

The Essayists 359 

Thomas Babington Macaulay 360 

Thomas Carlyle 364 

John Ruskin 372 

Matthew Arnold 378 

The Victorian Poets 385 

Alfred Tennyson 385 

Robert Browning 396 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 404 

The Novelists 411 

Charles Dickens 413 

William Makepeace Thackeray 417 

George Eliot 422 

Robert Louis Stevenson 426 

Minor Novelists - 430 

Later Novelists 434 

XII Twentieth Century Writers 441 

Novelists and Essayists. 443 

The Dramatists - - 447 

The Celtic (Irish) Group. 449 

The Poets - - 453 



INTRODUCTION 

What is Literature? — Any piece of writing, long or short, 
that gives permanent pleasure to men and women because of 
its artistic form and expression, is literature. Books which 
simply impart information are scientific rather than literary; 
books which appeal to our sense of beauty and to our imagina- 
tion, or which stir our feelings, belong to literature proper. Lit- 
erature is closely akin to what are called the fine arts — painting, 
sculpture, and architecture. Poetry, in particular, because it 
uses the language of emotion and imagination, is a fine art; and 
whenever prose is touched with these qualities, it too becomes a 
fine art. Literature is an expression of the beautiful in pleasing 
speech. Science is concerned with technical ideas and is there- 
fore more coldly intellectual; literature humanizes knowledge 
with sentiment and imagination. 

English literature is the thought of the English people put 
into artistic form. It consists of poetry and such prose forms 
as the novel, the essay, oratory, biography, and history written 
in attractive style. Style is the flavor of personality. "Litera- 
ture is the personal use of language," says Newman. The history 
of English literature attempts to record the lives and works of 
standard authors together with the historical and social influences 
that helped to determine the direction of their thought. Litera- 
ture is in part at least an expression of the social forces of the time 
in which it was written, but it is in a deeper sense the reflection 
of interesting personalities. 

Literature and History. — History has much to say of the deeds 
of men — how they founded states, made laws, built cities, went 
on voyages of discovery, waged wars, acquired territory, and 
waxed rich through commerce. These are outward actions; and 
yet, in a deeper sense, they are the results of such abiding emo- 
tions and ideals as ambition, love, hate, faith, duty, freedom. 

[9] 



10 



INTRODUCTION 



The man of action first had his dream and his vision, then the 
struggle, then the achievement. With these inward things of 
the spirit literature is concerned — the motives and passions which, 
in spite of changing thought and action, remain essentially the 
same in human nature, making the whole world kin. Scientific 
books become antiquated and history must be rewritten as knowl- 
edge widens, but a great poem is never out of date. Literature 
reproduces for posterity the spirit of a bygone age more vitally 
than history does: in the dramas and lyrics of the Elizabethan 
age still throbs the joyous life of those spacious days; in the 
novel the future historian will feel the currents of our times. 

For the larger background of literature we must go to history. 
Every epoch-making political, religious, or social movement in 
a nation is reflected in its literature. The institution of Feudalism, 
for instance, colored poetry and prose throughout the Middle 
Ages; the Renaissance and the Reformation stimulated literary 
production for generations. Our earlier literature bears the stamp 
of the artistocratic society from which it sprang: kings and princes 
and nobles fill the books. With the rise of the middle class in 
Chaucer's time democracy entered literature and through the 
centuries since has won its way. And so, from age to age, the 
poet, the dramatist, the novelist, have gone on weaving their 
silken tapestry, which we call literature, out of the political, 
religious, and social ideals of the people. Some knowledge of 
English history is therefore essential to an understanding of the 
forces which have contributed to the making of English literature. 

The Study of Literature. — We must not make the mistake of 
assuming, however, that a knowledge of history and biography 
means a knowledge of literature. Information about a period or 
writer is valuable in so far as it throws light on conditions and 
motives of literary activity, but studying about literature is not 
studying literature. History and biography, however interesting, 
should be kept subordinate. "The play's the thing," as Hamlet 
says; the poem's the thing. Better one poem or play or essay 
mastered and enjoyed than a whole volume of criticism and 
gossip. Great literature should be approached with an open mind 



INTRODUCTION 



11 



and a reverent spirit. Bacon's advice still holds good: "Read 
not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, 
but to weigh and consider," and one may add, to enjoy. The 
serious study of literary masterpieces will result in the enrichment 
of one's mental and spiritual life, and in the forming of im- 
perishable friendships among the loftiest thinkers and seers of 
our race. 

A history of English literature is simply a guidebook to this 
long picture gallery of immortals. It points out the masters and 
their works, tells something about them, tries to make them real 
and human to the seeker after truth and beauty, encourages 
him to read them for himself. It does not assume to be a substi- 
tute for even the least of the works it recommends; its place is 
secondary. Such a guidebook finds its highest usefulness not so 
much in giving information as in stimulating and suggesting. 
Its chief glory 

"Rather consists in opening out a* way 
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, 
Than in affording entry for a light 
Supposed to be without." 



SOME USEFUL BOOKS OF A GENERAL NATURE 

Historical — Green's Short History of the English People, one vol., or 
Green's History of the English People, four vols. (American Book Co.); 
Gardiner's Students' History of England (Putnam); Traill's Social England 
(Putnam); Cheyney's Short History of England (Ginn). 

Literary.— Garnett and Gosse's Illustrated History of English Liter- 
ature, 4 vols, (specially valuable for pictures and facsimiles); Cambridge 
History of English Literature, 14 vols.; Jusserand's Literary History of 
the English People, 2 vols.; Ten Brink's Early English Literature, 3 vols.; 
Morley's English Writers, 11 vols, (through Elizabethan period). In 
Biography the English Men of Letters Series (Macmillan), Great Writers 
Series (Scribners), and Beacon Biographies (Merrill), are standard. 
Hinchman and Gummere's Lives of Great English Writers (Houghton) is 
an interesting volume of thirty-eight biographies. 



12; 



INTRODUCTION 



Selections Covering the Field of English Literature. — Newcomer and 
Andrews' Twelve Centuries of English Poetry and Prose (Scott, Foresman 
& Co.), Manly's English Poetry and Manly's English Prose (Ginn), Cen- 
tury Readings in English Literature (Century Co.), Pancoast's Standard 
English Poems and Standard English Prose (Holt). These are single- 
volume collections designed to accompany a History of English Literature. 

Gayley's Classic Myths in English Literature (Ginn) and Winchester's 
Principles of Literary Criticism (Macmillan) are good companions in the 
reading and study of literature. 

For a popular account of the growth of the English language and changes 
in the meanings of words, Krapp's Modern English (Scribners) and Green- 
ough & Kittredge's Words and their Ways in English Speech (Ginn) are 
valuable. On the forms and scansion of verse, Alden's Introduction to 
Poetry (Holt) and Johnson's Forms of English Poetry (American Book Co.) 
are recommended. 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



CHAPTER ONE 

ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 
450-1066 

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 

The Angles and Saxons. — The beginnings of what we now call 
English Literature properly belong to the continent of Europe 
rather than to the island home of the English people. The 
earliest poetry tells of the adventures, the sea wanderings, the 
warlike deeds, the religious impulses, of men who belonged to 
Teutonic tribes dwelling along the rugged coasts of northwestern 
Europe from the Scandinavian and Danish peninsulas to the 
Rhine and Elbe rivers. Three of these kindred tribes came in 
large numbers to the coasts of Britain in the fifth and sixth cen- 
turies of our era, and by the beginning of the seventh century 
had spread over much of what we know as England. They were 
the Jutes, the Angles, and the Saxons, half-barbarian it is true, 
but possessed of energy and political capacity. Of the three 
the Jutes seem to have been the least aggressive, for they con- 
tented themselves with occupying the southeastern corner of the 
island, while the Saxons and the Angles pushed on northward 
and westward until they were masters of the territory stretching 
far beyond the River Thames. The Angles were more numerous 
than the other tribes and more capable besides, for from them 
the country derives its name of Angle-land, afterwards modified 
to England; from them and their kinsmen the older language is 
often called Anglo-Saxon; and among them developed the first 
literary culture. 

[13J 



M 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



The Britons and the Romans.— The land to which these fierce 

strangers came had already been the scene of severe conflicts 
between the Britons, the original inhabitants, and the Romans, 
the great colonizers of ancient times. The native Britons were 
a Celtic people, of the same race as the earlier inhabitants of 
France and Spain. By the first century before Christ these 
Britons had spread over what we call England, Scotland, Ireland, 
and the adjacent islands. Organized in tribes or clans, they 
bad developed a rude sort of civilization which was known to 
the Romans of Caesar's time who made trading expeditions to 
Britain; but because of their geographical isolation, they remained 
comparatively unmolested until Julius Caesar visited them in 
55 B. C. This visit of the imperial Roman was the beginning 
of trouble for the Britons, though it was nearly a hundred years 
later before they yielded to the world-conquerors under the 
Emperor Claudius and his legions. After this conquest, Britain, 
except in the far north and west, was rapidly transformed into 
a Roman colony with splendid villas, temples, theaters, public 
baths, great walls and highways. The Roman occupation lasted 
until the early part of the fifth century, when the legions were 
recalled to defend Rome against the incursions of the bar- 
barian hordes from the north. Weakened by several centuries of 
foreign luxury, the Romanized Britons were now harassed by 
their fiercer kinsmen, the northern and western Celts, who 
rushed in when the Roman garrisons were withdrawn. In the 
midst of these domestic troubles came the Saxons swarming 
over the narrow seas to the shores of Britain, a virile folk who 
meant to stay and possess the land. It was about the middle of 
the fifth century when this Teutonic migration began, and by 
the seventh century the three tribes already mentioned had 
firmly established themselves in Britain. Henceforth the islands 
were to be fundamentally Anglo-Saxon, or English, in life and 
thought. 

Influence of the Celts on Literature. — The Celt, whom these 
English had conquered, was impulsive, quick-witted, imagina- 
tive, fond of color, given to gayety, eager for news, clever at} 



ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 



15 



repartee, and a lover of beauty for its own sake. Sensitive of 
soul, he was responsive to the changeful moods of nature and 
loved to translate them, into song and fairy tale, peopling the 
streams and fields and forests with mysterious beings that flit 
Ariel-like through the air, or with elfin creatures that dance in 
the moonlight, or with woodsprites whose "airy tongues syllable 
men's names." He abounded, too, in sentiment, giving voice 
to his emotions in tones of lament or of rapturous joy. The 
utterance of the Celtic bard shows a kind of wild grace and the 
song of the Celtic warrior a fierce joy in the clash of battle, for 
on occasion he was a valiant fighter. 

The influence of this Celtic spirit upon our literature has been 
considerable, though it is too subtle and elusive to be measured 
with exactness. The inward grace and nimbleness, the airiness 
and lightness, of some of our most exquisite poetry from Chaucer 
through Spenser and Milton and Gray on to Poe and Tennyson, 
can be explained only by taking into account the union of the 
sensitiveness and gayety of the Celt with the solidity and high 
seriousness of the Anglo-Saxon. This blending of the two tem- 
peraments was, to be sure, the result of centuries of racial absorp- 
tion through intimate association and intermarriage, in the 
course of w T hich the Norman-French element powerfully rein- 
forced the Celtic contribution. But there is little or no trace 
in our earlier literature of the immediate influence of the con- 
quered race. Out of the mist of these confused times, however, 
has emerged one leader, at least, whose doughty exploits have 
been the inspiration of many a poem and story, the chivalrous 
King Arthur with his goodly fellowship of knights. Loaded 
with legends this heroic Briton has come down the centuries of 
English poetry as perhaps the most impressive figure in the 
romance of our race. Around some brave chieftain among the 
Celts stories of prodigious valor early began to gather, out of 
which there gradually developed the great Arthurian cycle per- 
fected by Tennyson in his Idylls of the King. 

Geographical Position of England, — Both the geographical po- 
sition and climate of Britain were favorable to the development 



16 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



of the new race which was to be permanently at home there. 
Separated from his kinsmen on the continent of Europe, the Anglo- 
Saxon had a chance to develop in comparative quiet and under 
milder skies his nation-making instincts. This isolation meant, 
above all, the growth of a sturdy spirit of independence which, 
as we shall see later on, was to blossom into political and religious 
liberty. He could conserve his strength here in his island home, 
protected by watery barriers from constant external interference; 
and these same encircling seas could become highways as well, 
joining the island to the continent whenever England needed 
the stimulus of new ideas from abroad. This detachment has 
from the first helped the English to preserve their individuality, 
and it has encouraged a certain independence of mind; while at 
the same time the opportunities for contact with continental 
movements of various kinds, political, intellectual, artistic, have 
saved them from a narrow provincialism. Thus it has happened 
that the sense of nationality among the English people, while 
deep and vital, has been enlightened and liberal. Of their lite a- 
ture, which is itself a refined and artistic expression of nation al 
life and hence mightily influenced by these same advantages of 
situation and climate, we may now take up the story. 

ANGLO-SAXON POETRY 

1. THE PAGAN POETRY 

Subjects of the Oldest Poetry. — The oldest Anglo-Saxon poetry 
known to us is full of the spirit of war and adventure, reflecting 
the two ruling passions of the race, fighting and wandering. The 
unknown writers of these early lays sing of the mysterious gloom 
of the sea which beat upon their rugged coasts and over which 
bands of warriors went to seek their enemies, or some bold adven- 
turer, impelled by curiosity, set forth to visit distant lands. A 
restless folk were these primitive Englishmen of the continent. 
When the long winter was over, they pushed out in every direc- 
tion in their dark boats, bent on plundering or discovery or on 
wreaking vengeance upon their neighbors. They were in a chronic 



ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 17 



state of war: tribal feuds kept them in fighting mood and whetted 
their appetite for blood. When they returned victorious from 
a conflict, they assembled in the mead-hall and feasted and sang 
far into the night. They lived in a region of misty moors, dismal 
fens or marshes, and desolate stretches of seacoast, which their 
childlike fancy peopled with all sorts of dreadful monsters. Liv- 
ing close to nature, these fierce Teutons knew all her moods, and 
so we find their songs and their stories colored with this intimate 
knowledge and love of nature as they saw it all about them in a 
climate which, during much of the year, was cloudy and chill. 
They were fond of giving picturesque names to natural objects: 
the sea was "the whale's path," "the seal's bath," "the swan's 
road;" the sun was "heaven's candle" shining through the mist; 
the night was a "shadow-helm" that came down upon the darken- 
ing earth; their boats were "foamy-necked floaters very like 
seabirds." Indeed, this passionate love of the sea, with its re- 
sounding challenge to man and its plaintive undertone, runs 
through English poetry from the nameless authors of the earliest 
Anglo-Saxon lyrics down to Byron and Tennyson and Matthew 
Arnold; and often even the joy of conquest over foes has not been 
greater than the pride of mastery over the sea. War and the 
sea — these are the two favorite themes of the older Anglo-Saxon 
poems, through which there runs a certain grim religious serious- 
ness reflecting the somber cast of the Teutonic mind. 

Primitive Religion of the Anglo-Saxons. — The gods of the 
Anglo-Saxons, before they came to Britain, were as fierce and 
blood-loving as the men of whom they were the giant images. 
They had all the passions of these warriors and sea rovers as well 
as their sense of the mystery of nature. Only the brave, espe- 
cially those who died fighting enemies, could enter Valhalla, hall 
of heroes, after death. Above the battlefield rode the Valkyries, 
victory-women, on their cloud-like steeds to carry dying warriors 
to Woden's hall. Woden was the chief of the gods; Tiu was the 
god of war; Thor the god of thunder; and Frea the goddess of 
fruitfulness. After these Teutonic deities four days of the week 
are named; while from Eostre, goddess of the dawn or of spring, 



18 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



comes our word Easter. More dread than any of these, however, 
was Wyrd, or Fate, who controlled all mortal things. "Wyrd 
goeth ever as she is bound," says Beowulf. An element of fatalism 
gives a somber tinge to all this older Anglo-Saxon poetry, that 
feeling of human helplessness in the hands of some inexorable 
power, which has been the mood of all great tragedy. But this 
pagan poetry, which had its beginnings on the continent, fell 
later into Christian hands and has come down to us considerably 
modified in religious coloring, though enough of the primitive 
spirit remains to enable us to form a good notion of the life and 
ideals of these distant ancestors of ours. 

Leading Traits of the Early English. — In spite of their delight 
in bloodshed and robbery, these early Englishmen had such 
redeeming traits as seriousness, steadiness, generosity, a high 
sense of honor, and a feeling for law and personal freedom. Above 
all, they had that splendid vitality, that primitive freshness and 
vigor, which, as we shall see, is so necessary in the making of a 
great nation — the sound physical basis of statecraft and of artis- 
tic expression as well. Along with the faults of youth they had 
the potential virtues of well-rounded manhood. They were 
sensitive alike to praise or blame; they were seekers after glory 
rather than fighters for material wealth or mere power; they 
showed in their mightiest deeds of physical prowess a certain 
rude nobility which suggests the knightly courtesy of the days 
of chivalry. When Beowulf lay dead, after sacrificing his life 
in the fight with the dragon to save his people, his companions 
can think of no higher tribute than this: 

Of men he was mildest and most beloved, 
To his kin the kindest, keenest for praise. 1 

* 

That he might live to later times through the praiseworthiness 
of his deeds was the one ardent desire of this heroic leader of his 
people. 

A Group of Shorter Poems.— Among the lyric poems which 



1 From Gummere's Version. 



ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 



19 



afford us glimpses of the Anglo-Saxon and his kindred before 
the permanent settlement of Britain, are several interesting 
fragments telling of heroes, wanderings, and sea-sorrow. The 
oldest of these is Widsith, or the Far-Traveler, in which a wander- 
ing minstrel sings of his journeys through strange lands as well 
as to the courts of well-known princes. He was often enter- 
tained in royal hall and rewarded with golden treasure for his 
songs and skilful playing on the harp. He sang of deeds of 
prowess before kings and was ever a welcome guest: 

Widsith spake, his word-hoard unlocked, 
Who farthest had fared among folk of earth 
Through tribes of men, oft taking in hall 
Rich meed of gold. 

These are the first lines of the poem, and with the unlocking of 
Widsith's "word-hoard" the long story of English literature 
begins. Another typical utterance of this early time is "Deor's 
Complaint," a song of consolation by an old court poet whom 
a rival singer had supplanted in royal favor. In his day of adver- 
sity Deor recalls how various heroes of his own race had suffered 
ill-treatment at the hands of former friends and patrons, and 
yet had kept brave hearts until they finally overcame. He too 
can endure, though it sorely grieves him to lose his lands and 
his place before the king. The refrain of the little poem, tinged 
with melancholy though it is, sounds a characteristic note of Anglo- 
Saxon poetry, courageous endurance: 

Yet he strove on and overcame, nor shall my strength be less. 

"The Seafarer" is another interesting lyric, in which an old 
viking recounts his tribulations on a wintry sea far from kinsmen 
and friends; and yet his incurable seafaring passion makes him 
love the dangers of the deep more than the quieter joys of the land : 

Yet the thoughts of my heart now are throbbing 

To test the high streams, the salt waves in tumultuous play. 

Desire in my heart ever urges my spirit to wander 

To seek out the home of the stranger in lands afar off. 1 



1 Iddings* Translation. 



20 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



This same passion for the sea throbs in Tennyson's "Ulysses"; 
old and new English poetry come together in such lines as these : 

Push off, and sitting well in order smite 
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds 
To sail beyond the sunset and the baths 
Of all the western stars, until I die. 

Closely akin to "The Seafarer," but gloomier by far, is "The 
Wanderer," which is the lament of an exiled minstrel out on the 
sea for the good cheer of home. He has fallen asleep in his boat 
from sheer weariness and has dreamed of the bright mead-hall 
where he was rewarded with gifts from his lord and with applause 
from his fellows. He suddenly awakes to find the snow and 
hail falling about him and the sea birds dipping to the waves. 
His sorrow is renewed at the memory of those happy times, and 
he shapes a song on the vanity of human hopes and the transitory 
nature of earth's joy and loveliness. To him it seems that every- 
thing is in the hands of Wyrd, the goddess of Fate, who destroys 
cities and brings princes to naught. These four short poems are 
personal lyrics. If we would get a wider knowledge of the primi- 
tive Anglo-Saxon, we must turn to the great national epic poem 
Beowulf. 

Beowulf: the Story. — This long poem of over three thousand 
lines is mainly about the heroic deeds of Beowulf, prince and 
warrior among the Geats, a people who dwelt in the southern 
part of Sweden. The story is as follows: 

King Hrothgar, whose realm was in the north of Denmark, had built a 
great pleasure-hall near the sea and named it Heorot, or in modern English 
Hart, because its gold-adorned gables were decorated with the antlers of 
a deer or hart. In this hall the king and his thanes or knights feasted and 
here his band of knights would often sleep. A horrible monster called 
Grendel, whose lair was deep down under the sea, hearing the sound of 
revelry in this mead-hall, came one night across the misty moors, broke 
into the hall and carried off thirty warriors. For twelve years the demon 
Grendel had paid his deadly visits, until the king's company of thanes waa 
sadly reduced, the land neglected, and the old king dispirited. Across the 
narrow seas Beowulf, nephew of King Hygelac, heard of Hrothgar's distress 



ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 



21 



and resolved to go to his relief. With fourteen brave companions he crossed 
to Denmark. At the banquet in his honor Beowulf after relating to the 
king, queen, and knights his own deeds of prowess, concluded with these 
words: "I am resolved to do an earl's brave deed, or end my life in this 
mead-hall." 

That night Beowulf and his men occupied the hall, reclining on the 
benches. After a while came Grendel bursting through the doorway: 

Straightway he seized a sleeping warrior 
For the first, and tore him fiercely asunder, 
The bone-frame bit, drank blood in streams, 
Swallowed him piece-meal: swiftly thus 
The lifeless corse was clear devoured, 
E'en hands and feet. 1 

Grendel then attacks Beowulf who grapples fiercely with him, the two 
swaying back and forth through the hall, overturning benches and making 
a fearful din. Grendel has met his match for once; he tries to get away; 
but Beowulf pulls off his arm and part of his shoulder, and the monster 
mortally wounded flees howling to his den beneath the sea. The great 
arm with its claw-like hand is fastened to the front of the building as a 
grisly trophy. Beowulf is rewarded with rich gifts by King Hrothgar and 
his queen. That night, however, Grendel's mother comes from the sea- 
depths and avenges her son's death by carrying off one of the king's most 
valiant thanes. Sorrow is renewed in Heorot, and Beowulf therefore 
resolves to seek out the she-monster. 

The next morning accompanied by his men and guided by the king, Beo- 
wulf rides to the sea cliffs below which there is a mad whirlpool. It is a 
gloomy spot, where strange sea-beasts disport themselves at will. Mailclad 
and armed with his trusty sword Beowulf plunges into the raging pool, and 
fighting his way through swarms of monsters reaches late in the day the 
dwelling of the mere-wolf at the very bottom of the sea. He grapples with 
her and finally throws her to the ground. Rising and attacking him in 
desperate anger, she pushes him so hard that he stumbles and falls. His 
own sword is useless, but luckily he sees on the ground a magic sword of 
some old sea-giant; grasping this he rises and wrathfully smites her neck, 
"breaking her bone-ring." Beowulf now cuts off the head of Grendel, whose 
body is lying near, and holding it fast swims up through the bloody waters 
to greet his waiting and despairing companions. Loud is the joy in Heorot 
at his victory and safe return. Loaded with gifts Beowulf and his men sail 
for home. 

A long period now intervenes. For fifty years Beowulf has ruled the 



l These selections are, for the most part, from Gummere's translation: Old English Epic 



22 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Geats. In his old age a flying, fire-spewing dragon is ravaging the land 
because its lair has been robbed of golden treasure by a runaway slave. 
The old king girds himself for battle with the "twilight-flier" in order to 
save his people. Single-handed he attacks the dragon in its cave, and after 
a desperate fight slays it, but is himself mortally wounded by the monster's 
bite. Of his thanes only Wiglaf stays by him in his dire need; the rest for- 
sake him and flee. Wiglaf receives the dying commands of the king along 
with the gift of a golden collar, helmet, and ring. 

A barrow bid ye the battle-famed raise 

For my ashes. 'Twill shine by the shore of the flood, 

To folk of mine memorial fair 

On Hrones Headland high uplifted, 

That ocean-wanderers oft may hail 

Beowulf's Barrow, as back from far 

They drive their keels o'er the darkling wave. 

Then his people prepare a mighty funeral-pile on the seacliff and burn his 
body, as the king had wished. 

Then upon the hill 
The people of the Weders wrought a mound 
High, broad, and to be seen far out at sea. 
In ten days they had built and walled it in 
As the wise thought most worthy; placed in it 
Rings, jewels, other treasures from the hoard. 

About the mound 
The warriors rode, and raised a mournful song 
For their dead king; exalted his brave deeds, 
Holding it fit men honour their liege-lord, 
Praise him and love him when his soul is fled. 

Beowulf: Characteristics. — In this wonderful poem of Beowulf 
we get glimpses of the old continental life of the English. We 
hear of tribal feuds, fights with uncanny creatures of the dismal 
fens and moors, treasure-giving and mead-drinking in hall where 
the minstrel sings of ancestral heroes; we hear of antique magic 
swords and runic charms, of extraordinary swimming-matches 
and deep sea-diving to the mysterious haunts of demons, of en- 
counters with flying fire-dragons in caves filled with gold cups 
and glittering jewels, and finally of elaborate funeral ceremonies 
in honor of a mighty chieftain. We have one charming picture 
of a queenly woman bearing the mead-cup to a distinguished 



ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 




A PAGE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF BEOWULF 



24 ENGLISH LITERATURE 



guest, and later, seated by her royal lord, listening well pleased 
to that guest's recital of courageous deeds. With the men who 
figure in this epic story there is a keen love of glory together with 
an eager thirst for praise. Strength, courage, self-reliance, sub- 
mission to fate — these are the virtues most lauded in the poem. 
There is no mention of England, and yet the spirit is unmistak- 
ably English. The mood of the men in Beowulf is essentially 
the mood of Englishmen from Alfred to Cromwell and Welling- 
ton. There are few gentler touches in the poem, it is true, to 
light up the somber atmosphere of myth and legend; but nature 
was harsh to these first Englishmen, stimulating their supersti- 
tious fancy to evoke dread forms out of the gloom. Moreover, 
being girt round with foes, they had little time to cultivate the 
graces of life. 

As in other national epics there is a mixture of history and 
legend, so also we find in Beowulf a basis of fact for action and 
character; but it would be a useless as well as hopeless task to 
attempt a clear separation of history from myth in a great primi- 
tive folk-poem. When the poem was written we do not certainly 
know. The unknown author probably gathered his material 
from the folklore legends brought over by the Angles and Saxons 
in the fifth and sixth centuries. During the seventh and eighth 
centuries these legends, metrically arranged and sung by glee- 
men, were in all probability made into a long epic poem by some 
Northumbrian writer; the existing manuscript of Beowulf, how- 
ever, now in the British Museum, is in West Saxon and belongs 
to the tenth century. Though the poem in the form in which it 
has come down to us shows revision by Christian hands, the 
atmosphere and setting remain characteristically pagan. 

Scop and Gleeman. Poetical Form. — The man who could 
put into song the deeds of heroes was highly esteemed among 
Teutonic peoples, and we accordingly find the scop, or maker of 
verse, prominent in the company of royal thanes. The scop was 
the stationary court-poet who shaped the raw material of his- 
tory and legend into patriotic song and story and chanted them 
at banquets or at other festal gatherings of kings and nobles; 



ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 



25 



though sometimes, no doubt, he went from court to court reciting 
his verses. It was the gleeman, however, who was the true wan- 
dering minstrel, the strolling harper, the singer of poems made 
by others, although he occasionally composed his own songs. 
Anglo-Saxon poetry is well adapted to this rhythmic chanting 
accompanied by music of the harp. Every line is made up of 
two short halves with pause between; and each of these halves 
contains two strongly accented syllables. Instead of end-rhyme, 
as in modern poetry, there is alliteration, or the use of similar 
letters or sounds at the beginning of two or more words in each 
full line. This union of alliteration and accent gave to Anglo- 
Saxon poetry a rhythm admirably suited for strong musical utter- 
ance. Such warlike lays, for example, as the " Fight at Finns- 
burgh" and the "Battle of Maldon," must have been chanted 
by gleemen with thrilling effect. A few typical lines from Beo- 
wulf will illustrate the form of our oldest poetry as just described: 

Thaer waes haeletha hleahtor, hlyn swynsode, 

Word waeron wynsume. Eode Wealtheow forth, 

Cwen Hrothgares, cynna gemyndig, 

Grette gold-hroden guman on healle; 

Ond tha freolic wif ful gesealde 

Aerest Est-Dena ethel-wearde, 

Baed hine blithne aet thaere beor-thege. 

There was laughter of liegemen; loud it resounded; 

Words were winsome. Came Wealtheow forth, 

Queen of Hrothgar, of courtesy mindful, 

Gold-adorned greeting the guests in hall; 

And the high-born lady handed the cup 

First to the East-Danes' country-warden, 

Bade him be blithe at the beer-drinking. 

Two or three readings aloud of these lines will make manifest 
the alliterative and accentual rhythm of Old English verse and 
will show, besides, that many of these unfamiliar-looking words 
are virtually the same as those in use to-day. 

2. THE CHRISTIAN POETRY 

The Christian Influence. — A change came over the spirit of 
Anglo-Saxon poetry in the seventh century when Christianity 



26 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



began to take the place of the primitive religion of the English 
through the preaching of missionaries and the establishment of 
schools for the advancement of the new faith. Two streams of 
Christianity flowed into England, one from Celtic Ireland, which 
had been converted several centuries before, to Northumbria, 
and the other direct from Rome to southern and central England 
through the coming of Augustine to Kent in 597. Thus there were 
two centers of Christian activity: the influence of Roman Chris- 
tianity radiated from Canterbury, and of Celtic Christianity 
from the monasteries of Northumbria and later from the school 
at York. 

The first Christian poetry belongs to Northumbria. Here 
at the monasteries of Jarrow and Whitby near the windswept 
shores of the North Sea lived and wrote several men who may be 
called the fathers of our literature. Later on, when Northumbria 
lost her political supremacy, the southern kingdom of Wessex 
became the great literary center of England; but Northumbria 
was the earliest home of literary culture. In the wake of Chris- 
tianity came the immense inheritance of Latin learning, arts, 
and ideals, with their vast imperial background, furnishing new 
subjects for literature and drawing the isolated Anglo-Saxon 
genius into the world stream of letters. Thus the Church became 
the first patron of English literature, the heir and guardian, 
indeed, of the treasure house of learning for western Europe. 
During the long years of transition from pagan to Christian ideals, 
the monk had taken the place of the wandering minstrel, Biblical 
story and the legends of saints had become the subject matter 
of song, the uncanny monsters of moor and fen had disappeared, 
and Wyrd, or Fate, had changed to "divine providence ;" though 
the pagan passion for war and the sea still colored the milder 
atmosphere of the newer poetry. 

"Venerable Bede" (673-735).— At the monastery of Jarrow 
in Northumbria lived a monk named Baeda, or Bede, who, in 
his own words, was always "taking delight in learning, teaching, 
and writing." Bede was the foremost scholar of his time, a 
prolific writer, and a man of great purity of life and strength of 



ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 27 



character. Early in the eighth century he wrote in Latin The 
Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which, in spite of 
its name, is not simply a church history, but a general account 
of the inhabitants of England from Julius Caesar's time to his 
own. Although this book, written in an age of singular cred- 
ulity, is a curious mixture of fact and legend, it is nevertheless a 
valuable source of information, for Bede was a painstaking his- 




DURHAM CATHEDRAL 
The burial-place of "Venerable Bede." 

torian. To him we are indebted for an interesting account of the 
poet Caedmon who lived in the neighboring monastery of Whitby. 

Caedmon (died 680), — According to Bede this Caedmon was 
a servant at the monastery of Streoneshalh, or Whitby, in North- 
umbria, the ruins of which still stand on the cliffs above the 
North Sea. The head of this establishment was the Abbess 
Hilda, a princess of the royal blood. It was customary at the 
feasts there for each one to take the harp and sing to its accom- 



28 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



paniment for promotion of the general mirth. But Caedmon 
was an ignorant man and knew not how to sing or play the harp ; 
and so it happened that when he saw the harp draw near, he 
would slip out of the banquet hall and for shame steal away to 
his lodging. One night he had as usual left the entertainment, 
going this time to the stables to take charge of the cattle for the 
night. In his sleep there appeared to him a man who saluted 
him and said: "Caedmon, sing me something." "I cannot 
sing anything," replied Caedmon, "and for that reason I left 
the feast and came hither." Again he who spoke to him said: 
"Nevertheless you will have to sing to me." Then asked Caed- 
mon: "What shall I sing?" He replied: "Sing to me the 
beginning of all things." 

The song which Caedmon sang, as reported by Bede, is pro- 
bably the first piece of extant English literature composed in 
.England: 

Now must we hymn the Master of Heaven, 

The might of the Maker, the deeds of the Father, 

The thought of his heart. He, Lord everlasting, 

Established of old the source of all wonders: 

Creator all-holy, He hung the bright heaven, 

A roof high upreared, o'er the children of men; 

The King of mankind then created for mortals 

The world in its beauty, the earth spread beneath them, 

The Lord everlasting, omnipotent God. 1 

Caedmon related his dream to Hilda and the learned men of the 
monastery, and by her order they translated to him various 
parts of the Bible narrative. After fixing it in his memory, for 
he was an unlettered man, Caedmon would meditate upon it 
and later turn it into poetry. He soon became a monk and de- 
voted himself to holy service, dying at an advanced age loved 
and revered for his pure life and because of the divine gift of song. 

Three poems, Genesis, Exodus, and a part of Daniel, known 
collectively as the Paraphrase, have come down to us under 
Caedmon's name; modern scholars quite generally agree, however, 



i Cook's Translation* 



ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 



29 



that all we certainly have from Caedmon is the hymn quoted 
by Bede, a version of which has just been given. The Paraphrase 
was discovered in the seventeenth century, and some earlier 
scholars, on the strength of Bede's assertion that Caedmon 
turned many parts of the Bible into song, associated Caedmon's 
name with these three poems as well as with a fragment entitled 
Judith contained in another manuscript. In all these so-called 
Caedmonian poems are passages of striking beauty and vigor. 
Whenever a warlike episode or other tragic situation occurs— 
such, for instance, as the overwhelming of Pharoah's army in 
the sea — the poet, true to the Teutonic instinct, gives free play 
to his imagination with the result that his verse glows with the 
fire of genuine passion. By their sweep and their sublimity many 
lines in the Genesis remind us of Milton, who a thousand years 
later, composed his great epic Paradise Lost on much the same 
theme. The fragment Judith in particular, based on the apocry- 
phal Book of Judith, is full of the clash of arms and the wild 
glee of triumph over foes. When Judith, a Hebrew maiden who 
has boldly entered the tents of the Assyrian hosts to save her 
native town, returns to the walls with the head of King Holo- 
fernes just cut off by her, the tumultuous greeting she receives 
from her townspeople before they rush forth to destroy the enemy, 
recalls the warlike din and savage joy of the most spirited pagan 
poetry: / 

Helmeted men went from the holy burgh, 

At the first reddening of dawn to fight; 

Loud stormed the din of shields. 

For that rejoiced the lank wolf in the wood, 

And the black raven, slaughter-greedy bird; 

Both knew that men of the land thought to achieve 

A slaughter of the fated ones. Then flew 

The eagle, dewy-feathered, on their track, 

Eager for prey; the sallow-coated bird 

Sang with its horny beak the song of war. 1 

Cynewulf. — Of Cynewulf, who after the unknown author of 
Beowulf was the greatest of Anglo-Saxon poets, we know even 



l Morley's Translation. 



30 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



less than we do of Caedmon. He lived in Northumbria or Mercia 
in the latter part of the eighth century and wrote a number of 
deeply religious poems, to four of which he signed his name in a 
kind of acrostic formed of runic letters. From certain appar- 
ently autobiographic passages in these poems we gather that 
in early life Cynewulf was a wandering minstrel singing in mead- 
halls and elsewhere, that later he may have been attached as a 
thane to some great prince, and that finally he gave up paganism 
for Christianity and devoted the last years of his life to composing 
religious verse. The four poems known to be his are Elene, 
The Christ, Fates of the Apostles, and Juliana. 

Elene (Helena) is the story of the finding of the true cross by 
Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine. Constantine 
sees in the sky on the eve of a great battle a jeweled cross with, 
the inscription, "By this sign shalt thou conquer." After the 
battle the victorious Emperor sends his mother Helena to the 
Holy Land to find the original of the cross of his vision. Miracu- 
lously guided she discovers three buried crosses in Jerusalem. 
By touching a dead body with each in turn she finds the true 
cross, for when that was touched the dead body was immediately 
restored to life. The account of the battle between Constantine 
and the Huns and the description of Helena's sea voyage reflect 
all the old barbarian passion for war and the sea, which in one 
form or another runs through the centuries of English poetry. 
The Christ is a metrical account of the Nativity, the Ascension, 
and Doomsday; while Juliana is the story of the sufferings and 
death of the virgin martyr-saint Juliana. 

Among other poems sometimes attributed to Cjmewulf the most 
interesting are the Dream of the Rood, or Cross) Andreas, a roman- 
tic story of the adventures of St. Andrew who . goes to rescue 
St. Matthew from cannibals and sorcerers; Judith, already men- 
tioned in connection with Caedmon; a number of Riddles; and 
an exceedingly beautiful poem called The Phoenix. 

The Phoenix is the one long Anglo-Saxon poem in which the 
gentler moods of nature find expression. The poem is based 
on a Latin original, but the rich, luxuriant coloring of the English 



ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 31 



version indicates a decided Celtic influence. The story is as 
follows : 

The Phoenix, a bird of gorgeous plumage, dwells far to the East in a fair 
forest upon the trees of which hang always the most delicious fruits. In 
this clime of the sun "neither hail nor frost nor windy cloud descends to the 
earth, nor does water fall smitten by the wind, but wondrous streams spring 
up as wells, and the winsome waters from the middle of the wood irrigate 
the soil with their fair flowing." No music was ever heard sweeter than 
the song of the Phoenix, the attendant of the sun. But after a thousand 
years the bird, grown old, desires to renew his youth, and so he builds him 
.*i funeral pile of odorous twigs and spices in a lonely wood. This pile is 
kindled by the sun's fierce rays and the bird's body reduced to ashes. From 
a little ball of ashes creeps a "wondrously beautiful worm" which soon 
grows into another gay-plumaged bird as resplendent as the first. And 
so dying and coming to life again the Phoenix goes on forever, a symbol of 
immortality. 

The poem is intended as a Christian allegory of death and resur- 
rection. The tropical gladness of the summer climes of balmy 
airs and sunlit seas is in strong contrast to the sullen gloom of 
northern lands and waters in the older Saxon poetry, reminding 
us of Tennyson's "island valley of Avilion," 

Deep meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns, 
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea. 

ANGLO-SAXON PROSE 

The Danish Invasions. — About the close of the eighth century 
marauding bands of Danes overran Northumbria. These Danes, 
be it remembered, were kinsmen of the Anglo-Saxons, but far 
behind them in civilization; for while the Anglo-Saxons had set- 
tled down to an agricultural life and had profited by the schools 
and religious training of Christian scholars, the Danes were es- 
sentially the same wild, freebooting folk from whom the English 
had separated on the continent three hundred years before. And 
now they had come to harry the land with fire and sword. North- 
umbria, the center of literary culture, was laid waste, her manu- 
scripts burned or scattered to the winds, her scholars killed or 



32 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



driven southward, and her churches pillaged or left in ruins. We 
do not wonder that the burden of the prayers of Englishmen in 
those troublous times was, "From the fury of the Danes, good 
Lord deliver us!" The literary and political supremacy of 
Northumbria was gone. The southern kingdom of Wessex 
through the energy and genius of Alfred, who finally checked the 
Danish invasion, became in the second half of the ninth century 
the political and literary center of England. Such poetic 
literature as escaped the fury of the Danes was now trans- 
lated into West Saxon and in that dialect has come down 
to us; while a new literature, almost entirely of prose, was 
developed at the court of King Alfred. 

Alfred the Great and Prose Literature. — 
Fortunately for the English race there came to 
the throne in 871 a man who was fitted both 
by temperament and training to fight bat- 
tles, to govern with a strong hand, to build 
up schools, and to encourage literary ac- 
tivity. From a child he was a lover of 
books, and even in the most strenuous 
times of war he did not forget his obli- 
gations to promote learning and religion. 
Early in life he had been to Rome and later 
he had spent some time at the French court. 
No doubt what he had seen at these old 
centers of civilization made him ambitious 
that his own people should have an interest 
in the treasures of the past. He accordingly 
established schools, founded libraries, and 
statue of Alfred the brought noted scholars to his court. Re- 
Atwh^heLr cognizing his own lack of knowledge, he 
studied Latin, then the learned language, 
with a scholarly Welshman named Asser, who later wrote a life 
of his royal patron. What little leisure Alfred had from cares of 
State he devoted to the translation of books from Latin into 
Anglo-Saxon for the good of his people, who were in a deplor- 




ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 



33 



able state of ignorance. In his preface to the translation of Pope 
Gregory's Pastoral Care (Cura Pastoralis) in which he addresses 
the clergy of his kingdom, he says: "So entirely had learning 
fallen away among the English that there were very few on this 
side the Humber who knew how to render their prayers in Eng- 
lish or so much as translate an epistle from Latin into English. 
I suppose there were not many beyond the Humber. They were 
so few that I cannot think of a single one south of the Thames 
when I took the kingdom." 

Alfred cultivated friendly relations with lite- 
rary and religious centers on the continent, sent 
out explorers and gathered about him a body of 
learned men who turned into West Saxon many 
famous books and themselves composed others. 
In all these ways he sought to develop a strong 
national spirit and at the same time to save his 
country from a deadening provincialism. Be- 
cause of his unselfish character, his courage, his 
practical wisdom, and his high patriotism, he 
was early called ''England's Darling;" while his 
figure looms so large in those semi-barbarous 
times that by later generations he has been named "Alfred the 
Great." "He found learning dead, and he restored it; education 
neglected, and he revived it:" this is the language of an inscrip- 
tion to his memory at Wantage. Higher praise he would not 
have wished. 

Of the translations from Latin into his own tongue by Alfred 
himself, or under his direction, four are particularly noteworthy: 
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, of which men- 
tion has already been made; Gregory's Pastoral Care, a book of 
instructions for the clergy in the conduct of their daily duties; 
Orosius' Universal History and Geography, written by a ^p_aniah 
monk of the fifth century and regarded for several centuries- as 
the standard manual of general history; and Boethius' Consolation 

i This interesting relic, which is now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, was discovered in 
1693, near Alfred's retreat at Athelney. It is made of gold and blue enamel, with an effigy of the 
king as centerpiece. The inscription reads, "Alfred had me made." 




KING ALFRED'S 
JEWEL 1 



34 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



of Philosophy, the work of a noble Roman of the sixth century 
who wrote it to comfort himself in prison. This book King 
Alfred made into a standard textbook on ethics, adapting it to 
the moral and religious needs of the time. It was indeed through- 
out the middle ages a favorite book with philosophers and scholars 
generally. 

But the greatest prose monument of this period is the Anglo- 
Saxon Chronicle, which is not a translation but an original record 
of the most important events in English history from the middle 
of the fifth century to the middle of the twelfth. Brief records 
of the chief historical events of each year had been kept in the 
monasteries from the earliest times, but they were dry annals 
with many omissions. Under Alfred's direction these scanty 
chronicles were revised and enlarged into a connected history. 
That part in particular of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which has 
to do with Alfred's own reign rises into the dignity of real litera- 
ture. The monotony of the Chronicle is occasionally broken by 
the introduction of verse: for instance, under the year 937 we find 
the ''Battle of Brunanburgh," and under 991 the "Battle of Mal- 
don," two stirring martial poems full of the old-time fire of the 
race. Indeed, the "Battle of Maldon" has been aptly called the 
"swan-song of Anglo-Saxon poetry." 

Decline of Anglo-Saxon Literature. — The impulse which 
Alfred gave to religious and educational development lasted 
long after his time. Winchester, Alfred's capital, became the 
center of educational and religious activity, and from it radiated 
an energizing influence to western and central England, but 
Northumbria was left desolate. No really great literature was 
produced, however. There were theological works, textbooks, and 
lives of saints, but there were no inspired singers as in the days 
of Caedmon and Cynewulf. During the century and a half 
following Alfred's death (901), the only writings which may be 
called literature were the Homilies, or Sermons, of Aelfric, a great 
preacher who flourished at the end of the tenth and on into the 
eleventh century. These Homilies and the Anglo-Saxon Chroni- 
cle are the best examples of later Anglo-Saxon prose. The truth 



ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 35 



is, the tenth century was one of literary decadence; the creative 
impulse of the earlier days had spent its force; the tide of Roman 
culture that came with Christianity had ebbed; long political 
struggles had exhausted the nation and narrowed its vision; 
new blood was needed. At this critical time came the Normans 
across zhe narrow sea bent on conquest. 

THE PERIOD IN OUTLINE (450-1066) 



LITERATURE 

L Anglo-Saxon Poetry 

Shorter Poems: Far-Traveler, 
Deor's Complaint, Seafarer, Wan- 
derer 

Beowulf (seventh or eighth cen- 
tury) 

Caedmon's Paraphrase of Scrip- 
ture, 670 

Cynewulf's Elene, Christ, Juliana 

(later eighth century) 
The Phoenix. Battle of Brunan- 

burgh, Battle of Maldon 

II. Anglo-Saxon Prose 
Alfred's Translations: Bede's Ec- 
clesiastical History, Orosius, 
Boethius, Gregory's Pastoral 
Care 

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (860-1154). 
Aelfric's Homilies 



HISTORY 

Coming of the Angles and Saxons 
under Hengist and Horsa, 449 

Introduction of Christianity under 
St. Augustine, 597 



Egbert, of Wessex, First King of all 
English Peoples, 827 

Invasions of the Danes, 790-878 
Reign of Alfred the Great, 871-901 



Reigns of Anglo-Danish kings, 
Cnut and his successors, 1016- 
1042 



Principal Themes of Anglo-Saxon Literature: War, Seafaring, Religion 



SOME USEFUL BOOKS 

Allen's Anglo-Saxon England, Freeman's Old English History, Brooke's 
Early English Literature, Brooke's English Literature from the Beginnings 
to the Norman Conquest, Translations of Beowulf by Child (Houghton), 
Garnett (Ginn), Gummere (Houghton), Hall (Heath), Huyshe (Dutton), 
Cook and Tinker's Translations from Old English Poetry, Cook and Tin- 
ker's Translations from Old English Prose. 



CHAPTER TWO 



ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 
1066-1350 

The Normans— The Normans, or Northmen, came to England 
in 1066 directly from Normandy in the northern part of France, 
where their ancestors had settled about a century and a half 
before. Their earlier home was in Scandinavia, Denmark, and 
the adjacent regions, from which the English themselves had 
originally come, as well as the troublesome Danes of Alfred's 
time. The Normans were therefore kinsmen of the Teutonic 
stock which, after conquering the Celts of Britain, had peopled 
the island and made its literature. But the Normans had lived 
in France since the early years of the tenth century and had so 
thoroughly assimilated the language and customs of their adopted 
country, that by the middle of the eleventh century they showed 
few traces of their wild northern origin. Through their inter- 
marriage with a southern folk they had acquired a certain dash 
and buoyancy, a brilliancy of wit, a sensitiveness to beauty of 
form, and a love of romance, without losing their native vigor 
and their adventurous spirit. They now spoke French, they 
encouraged learning and art, they built churches, they loved 
music and literature, they cultivated the courtly graces of chiv- 
alry, and paid in general more attention to the refinements of 
life than the English among whom they were soon to live and 
upon whom they were destined to have so signal an influence. 
On that October day in 1066 when Duke William's men moved 
forward to attack Harold's English army at Hastings, the Nor- 
man minstrel Taillefer went before the advancing host chanting 
one of the songs about Roland, Charlemagne's famous knight. 

136] 



ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



87 



Thus these transformed Northmen entered England with sword 
and song, significant emblems of political and literary con- 
quest. 

Effects of the Norman Conquest. — The coming of the Normans 
meant radical changes in the political, social, religious, and intellec- 
tual life of the English people. The new king of England, whom we 
know as " William the Conqueror," was the head of two kingdoms, 
as he was also duke of Normandy; indeed, for a hundred and 
fifty years after the Conquest the Norman line of English kings 
ruled over Normandy as well. Into all offices of State William 
put his own nobles, displacing the Anglo-Saxons, who speedily 
sank to the level of political servitude. Most of the large estates 
in England passed into the control of Norman masters who built 
great frowning castles, in which, with bodies of French retainers, 
they lived as lords looking down with aristocratic disdain upon 
the Saxon churls. The English clergy, who for centuries had 
contributed so much to learning and literature, were turned out 
of churches, and monasteries and their places filled with French 
and Italian priests and scholars. For instance, Lanfranc, a well- 
known writer of Normandy, himself an Italian, was made Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury. The little Saxon churches were replaced 
by splendid minsters which are among the architectural wonders 
of the world to-day. 

Along with these general political, social, and religious changes 
a new language was introduced as the medium of official and 
social intercourse, and with it came new ideas into the schools 
and a new kind of literature from royal court and baronial hall. 
But the English, though everywhere subordinate, held together 
in dogged determination to preserve their social unity and their 
own strong, sinewy speech, though as the years went on both 
foreign customs and alien tongue were to be gradually but com- 
pletely assimilated. Still, the tenacity with which the English 
held on to their native Saxon after it had ceased to be the language 
of books and culture, meant the ultimate triumph in all essen- 
tials of Anglo-Saxon speech and thought; but happily for us, this 
somber and somewhat rigid vernacular was heightened in color 



38 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



and made more supple by the infusion of French gayety of spirit 
and nimbleness of wit. 

This general disturbance of the old order was, however, the best 
thing which could have happened at this critical time in the his- 
tory of the English people; and among the definite results of the 
Norman Conquest four are specially noteworthy as contributing 
to the growth of the nation and its literature: 

1. England was drawn into the current of continental life. Thus 
she was saved from the deadening isolation into which she had 
lapsed after Alfred's time, inasmuch as the movement of the 
governing class back and forth would tend to strengthen the 
connection between the island and the continent of Europe. 

2. A stronger national unity followed the centralizing of power 
under a more systematic government. This growth in nationality 
was necessarily slow, however, because of the hostility of the two 
rival peoples for a long time after the Conquest. The chief 
weakness of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had grown out of their 
inability to unite. There can be no great literature where there 
is not a strong sense of nationality. The fusion of Norman and 
Saxon made England for the first time truly national. 

3. New ideas and new subjects for literature were brought into 
England by the Normans. The range of Anglo-Saxon literature, 
as we have seen, was narrow, and long before the Conquest the 
native poetry had lost its fire. Now fresh material had come 
from France where minstrels sang and poets composed endless 
romances of love and knightly prowess. 

4. The language was enriched by the absorption of French and 
Latin words. The cause of learning was also strengthened by 
the incoming of scholars of European reputation. For about a 
century and a half following the Conquest two languages were 
spoken in England, and one language, Norman-French, was used 
in literature. The only piece of native prose was the Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle, and that came to an end in 1154. All persons in author- 
ity spoke French and all official documents in State and Church 
were in that language. Between those who spoke French and 
those who spoke, only Saxon there was a great social gulf. The 



ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



39 



result was the disappearance of English as a literary language for 
a hundred and fifty years. 

During this time, however, there was naturally a considerable 
intermingling of the new and old populations through intermar- 
riage, and particularly through a developing sense of patriotic 
unity. Thus it came to pass that the Saxons learned some French, 
and the Normans were compelled for social and business reasons 
to know a little English. An event which hastened the fusion 
of the two peoples and the two languages was the loss of Nor- 
mandy in 1204 to the kings of England; after that date no English 
noble might hold an estate in France. Meanwhile, Saxon con- 
tinued to be the colloquial speech of the great sturdy people who 
lived close to the soil and did the everyday tasks of the nation; 
but it was not until 1362 that English might be used officially 
in law courts and in Parliament. Indeed, no king of England 
spoke English as his mother tongue for two hundred years after 
the Conquest. When the old English language did emerge 
from underground, so to speak, in the early thirteenth century, 
it was indeed a changed tongue: it had lost many of its inflections, 
or endings, and it was beginning to borrow French words; it was 
gaining in grace, flexibility, and range of expression. Trans- 
formed through the assimilation of a Romanic element, the lan- 
guage of Alfred, still Anglo-Saxon in genius and structure, was 
shaping itself for the poetic art of Chaucer and his successors. 

The New Literature. — The centers of literary production during 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were courts, castles, and 
religious houses; and the one centralizing institution, introduced 
by William the Conqueror and developed by his successors, was 
Feudalism. This was a system of land tenure by great nobles, 
based on military service for the king who, in theory at least, 
owned all the land. Out of Feudalism grew the knightly order 
of Chivalry which cast a glamour over mediaeval literature 
everywhere in western Europe and helped to satisfy the universal 
craving for marvels, color, and splendid pageantry. The spirit 
of chivalry manifested itself in knightly courage, romantic love, 
and religion — the three chief interests of the Middle Ages — all 



40 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



reflected in the literature of these confused and picturesque times. 
It is, accordingly, easy to distinguish two principal lines of liter- 
ary movement after the coming of the new literature about the 
opening of the thirteenth century — Romance and Religion. 

From the Conquest to the beginning of the thirteenth century, 
literature in England consisted mostly of histories, or chronicles in 
Latin, written by scholarly churchmen. Among these numerous 
chroniclers one in particular deserves emphatic mention, because 
his book came to be a storehouse of legends for later writers of 
romance. This was GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH, who was con- 
nected with the church at Monmouth on the Welsh border 
and was himself of Welsh descent. About 1140 Geoffrey wrote 
in Latin what he called a History of the Kings of Britain (His- 
toria Regum Britanniae) y tracing the line of sovereigns back to 
Brutus, a descendant of the Trojan Aeneas. Among these legend- 
ary British kings occur the names of Gorboduc, Cymbeline, 
Lear, and Arthur, all of whom figure in later literature — Gorbo- 
duc as the hero of our first English tragedy, Cymbeline and Lear 
in Shakespeare's great plays, and King Arthur more widely in 
the world's literature. This work was a clever compilation of 
classical traditions and Celtic stories which had no doubt long 
been floating around in oral form, ready for the shaping hand of 
a skilful narrator. The Arthurian story, by all odds the most 
valuable contribution made by Geoffrey in his book of wonders, 
appealed at once to the popular imagination. The nation was 
hungry for romance and therefore welcomed a work which fur- 
nished fresh material for poets at a time when there were signs of 
reviving literary activity. Wace, a French priest of the island 
of Jersey, turned Geoffrey's book into verse, and a little later 
LAYAMON (1205), a parish priest of "a noble church upon the 
Severn's bank," used Wace's poem as a basis for his metrical 
account of the kings of Britain. 

Layamon's Brut. — The production of this poet-priest Laya- 
mon is of interest to us chiefly because it contains the first account 
in English of King Arthur and his Round Table. The poem 
begins with the destruction of Troy and the flight of Aeneas to 



ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



41 



Italy, tells how Brutus, the great grandson of Aeneas, went west 
and founded the kingdom of Britain, traces the line of British 
kings,- and concludes with a lengthy history of Arthur and his 
knights. As Layamon introduced into his long poem of thirty- 
two thousand lines certain legends which are not found in his 
authorities, Wace, Bede, and others, we infer that he must have 
utilized local Celtic stories known to him in oral form, such as 
the tales about the wonderful Enchanter Merlin. We see, there- 
fore, how considerable was the Celtic influence upon the literature 
of the Anglo-Norman period through the writings of the two 
romancers, Geoffrey and Layamon, whose homes were on the 
border of Wales. Layamon's English shows that a few French 
words are creeping in, that the old endings are falling away, and 
that under French influence there is less alliteration and more 
tendency toward end-rhyme. The parting words of King Arthur 
in Layamon's poem and the account of the mysterious boat and 
maidens remind us of the familiar lines in Tennyson's Passing 
of Arthur, Layamon's words, with following translation, are 
these : 

And ich wulle varen to Avalun, to vairest aire maidene, 

To Argante there quene, alven swithe sceone, 

And heo seal mine wunden maken alle isunde, 

Al hal me makien mid haleweiye drenchen; 

And seothe ich cumen wulle to mine kineriche, 

And wunien mid Brutten mid muchelere wunne, 

Aefne than worden ther com of se wenden 

That wes an sceort bat lithen, sceoven mid uthen, 

And twa wimmen therinne wunderliche idihte; 

And heo nomen Arthur anan, and a neouste hine vereden, 

And softe hine adun leiden, and forth gunnen lithen, 

Tha wes hit iwurthen that Merlin seide whilen, 

That weore unimete care of Arthures forthfare; 

Bruttes ileveth yete that he beo on live, 

And wunnie in Avalun mid fairest aire alven; 

And lokieth evere Bruttes yete whan Arthur cume lithen, 

And I will fare to Avalon, to the fairest of all maidens, 
To Argante the very beautiful queen of the elves; 
And she shall make my wounds all sound, 
And make me whole with healing draughts; 



42 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



And afterwards will I come to my kingdom, 

And dwell 'mong Britons with mickle joy. 

Even with these words there came from the sea 

A short boat gliding, shoved by the waves, 

And two women therein with wondrous attire; 

And they took Arthur anon and bore him along, 

And softly laid him down, and so they floated forth. 

Then it came to pass as Merlin had erstwhile said 

That measureless sorrow from Arthur's departure should be; 

Britons yet believe that he still is alive 

And dwelleth in Avalon with fairest of all elves; 

Britons still think that Arthur is coming again. 




A TOURNAMENT SCENE IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

The Metrical Romances.— Through the Normans England 
became a sharer in that vast stock of chivalric stories which formed 
the popular literature of southwestern Europe in the Middle Ages. 
These stories were arranged in metrical form by poet-minstrels 
called "trouveres," who recited their productions in courts and 



ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



43 



castles. Long, rambling tales of adventure dealing with giants, 
dragons, knights, robbers, dwarfs, hapless maidens, and victori- 
ous chevaliers, the metrical romances made a strong appeal to the 
mediaeval imagination. The material out of which they were put 
together came from the Orient, from Italy, from France itself, 
and from Britain. We may, for convenience, divide these metri- 
cal romances into four great cycles: (1) the Troy Cycle, contain- 
ing stories about the Trojan War and its heroes; (2) the Alexander 
Cycle, centering about Alexander the Great; (3) the Charlemagne 
Cycle, celebrating the adventures of Charlemagne and his twelve 
peers; and (4) the Arthurian Cycle, a great collection of legends 
about the wonderful exploits and virtues of King Arthur and his 
knights. 

Of these four cycles the Arthurian is the largest and the most 
fascinating, the richest mine of romantic tales into which the 
nameless French poets of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 
dug for treasures. Many of these Norman-French romances 
were turned into English by various writers, whose names we do 
not know, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, just 
as Layamon had, a little earlier, enlarged upon W ace's French 
version of Geoffrey's book of stories. The English versions of 
the French poems are not mere translations, but usually free adap- 
tations showing individual skill and sometimes even a noteworthy 
genius for vivid narration. Besides the four great cycles, there 
were a number of metrical romances written on purely English 
and Danish subjects, such as Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, 
King Horn, and Havelock the Dane: in these, though based on 
French originals, the old Teutonic fondness for the sea and rough 
adventure is again manifest; while in the French romances proper 
and the English revisions of them, more is made of romantic 
love and knightly courtesy and of the gentler aspects of nature 
with its richer coloring in southern climes. In the long list of 
these metrical romances one in particular deserves prominent 
mention and wide reading both because of its intrinsic charm 
and its reflection of the new spirit in English literature. This is 
Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight. 



4A 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Gawayne and the Green Knight.— The story is about an exploit 
of Sir Gawayne, one of the noblest of Arthur's knights. 

One New Year's day while King Arthur and his court are feasting at Came- 
lot, a gigantic Green Knight rides into the hall on a green horse and makes 
this challenge: the Green Knight will allow any one of the knights to smite 
off his head on condition that this same knight shall receive a like blow 
in return from him twelve months hence. After the consternation caused 
by this strange proposition has a little subsided, Gawayne is permitted by 
the king to accept the challenge. He accordingly severs with one blow of 
the stranger's big battle-ax the Green Knight's head from his shoulders. 
The trunk picks up the head and holds it out while the lips speak to Gawayne, 
directing him to appear at the Green Chapel the next New Year's day for 
fulfilment of the compact. 

As the year draws toward an end Gawayne sets out upon his perilous jour- 
ney. Along the way he has encounters with all sorts of monsters and many 
hairbreadth escapes. At last on Christmas eve he reaches a fair castle, 
and after being assured that the Green Chapel is not far off, he is courteously 
invited by the lord of the castle to spend several days as his guest. His 
host, as soon as the Christmas festivities are over, makes ready for a three- 
days' hunt, but before leaving proposes to his guest that at each day's end 
they two shall exchange whatever they may have won during the day. In 
the absence of the host the beautiful lady of the castle tries to induce 
Gawayne to make love to her, but failing in this, bestows upon him a kiss. 
This kiss Gawayne gives to the lord upon his return at night, receiving in ex- 
change a gift of game. The third day, however, the lady, in addition to 
the usual kiss, offers Gawayne a green lace girdle which, he is told, will save 
him from mortal harm. This gift Gawayne, thinking of the giant's ax and 
his own neck, receives, but conceals it from his host at the end of the day, 
giving him only the kiss. 

On New Year's morning he rides forth to the Green Chapel, a gloomy 
cave in a desolate region, and faces the Green Knight who has just been 
sharpening his ax. True to his promise of a year ago, Gawayne bends his 
neck. The giant raises the ax twice without striking, but the third time he 
lets it graze Gawayne's neck slightly wounding him. Gawayne now springs 
back and draws his sword to defend himself, reminding the Green Knight 
that the compact has been fulfilled. Then all is explained: the Green Knight 
reveals himself as the host at the castle; he knows everything that has taken 
place — the wooing of the lady and the gift of the girdle. The whole thing 
had been planned by him and the fairy-woman Morgain as a test of Gawayne's 
faithfulness. Gawayne's only transgression was the concealment of the 
belt, and for this he had been slightly wounded; otherwise he would have 
escaped unhurt. Ashamed of his weakness, Gawayne wishes to return the 



ANGLONORMAN PERIOD 



45 



green lace, but the Green Knight presses it upon him. He returns to Game- 
lot and tells of his adventure, in honor of which the knights and ladies of 
Arthur's court ever afterwards wore girdles of green. 

The unknown poet who wrote Gawayne and the Green Knight 
is the most gifted writer of pre-Chaucerian romance. The date 
of the poem, which is written in the West Midland dialect, is about 
1350, and the original giant of the head-severing story was Cuchu- 
linn of the Irish folk-tales. Gawayne and the Green Knight abounds 
in picturesque descriptions of wild nature, details of mediaeval 
dress, armor, and architecture; the arrangement of episodes is 
artistic, so that the interest does not flag; while the moral pur= 
pose is clearly yet not obtrusively evident. 

The Pearl. — In the same manuscript with Sir Gawayne and the 
Green Knight is a sad and beautiful poem named The Pearly in 
which a father tells of the vision he had of his dead daughter. 

One summer day he fell asleep upon her grave and saw in a dream a crystal 
river with gleaming cliffs. At the foot of one of these sat a maiden clothed 
in bright garments adorned with pearls, and with one large pearl shining 
in her bosom. She seemed to come toward him as he tried in vain to cross 
the river. To his question whether she is indeed his own lost "pearl" 
(French, marguerite), the maid replies that his pearl is not really lost. She 
then explains some of the heavenly mysteries, mildly reproves his too vio- 
lent grief, and finally shows him afar off on golden mountains the celestial 
city with gem-decked walls and streets. Gazing he dimly discerns in the 
city a long procession of virgins, and at last recognizes among them his own 
1 'little queen." In the effort to plunge into the stream and reach her on 
the other side, the dreamer awakes to find himself weeping on her grave: 

"Then woke I in that garden fair; 

My head upon that mound was laid, 

There where my Pearl had strayed below. 

I roused me, and felt in great dismay, 

And, sighing to myself, I said: 
'Now all be to that Prince's pleasure.' " 

Religious Poetry and Prose. — Although a conventional relig- 
ious element may be found in the metrical romances of the Ar- 
thurian cycle, these poems are not concerned with Biblical stories 
but with Celtic legends influenced by the newer national ideals. 



46 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



The Pearl is, to be sure, essentially a religious poem, but the strong 
personal note, the heightened emotional coloring, and the romantic 
descriptive touches give it a lyric spirit; it is, indeed, an elegy. 
There is, however, a fairly well-defined group of metrical and 
prose productions in the Anglo-Norman period which are more 
formally religious, and which, in general, reflect more specifically 
the native English temper. From this group four pieces may be 
chosen as typical: The Moral Ode (Poema Morale), Ormulum, 
Cursor Mundi, Ancren Riwle. 

The Moral Ode belongs to the later twelfth century, and judging 
by the number of surviving copies, it must have been very popular. 
The poem is made up of moral and religious precepts : the author 
begins his metrical sermon by lamenting his ill-spent life, and 
then proceeds to exhort .his reader to live wisely; finally he goes 
on to depict the terrors of Hell and the joys of Heaven, frighten- 
ing the reader now with the one, and alluring him now with the 
other to keep him in the strait way. The Moral Ode sets forth a 
practical philosophy of life which is based on the motive of self- 
preservation. The poem is in fourteen-syllable lines arranged 
in rhyming couplets, a new form in English literature. 

The Ormulum is a long and tedious metrical paraphrase of such 
parts of the Bible as were commonly used in the church services 
for the whole year, followed by an interpretation and application. 
It is a kind of primer of religious instruction, and hardly deserves 
to be classed as a poem in the modern sense. The author explains 
that his book is called Ormulum "because Orm made it." So 
careful was he to indicate the proper spelling and pronunciation 
of words as used in his part of England (Lincolnshire) at the begin- 
ning of the thirteenth century, that the Ormulum is exceedingly 
valuable to-day in the study of the English language. 

Cursor Mundi is a rhyming universal history from creation to 
doomsday, a mixture of Biblical narratives and religious and 
secular legends. The writer begins by remarking that people 
like to hear romances of Alexander, Julius Caesar, the Siege of 
Troy, King Arthur, and Charlemagne; but that he will sing of 
divine love and the most loyal and beautiful of all ladies, the 



ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



47 



Virgin Mary. He accordingly writes with the deliberate purpose 
of competing with the four great cycles of romance, not primarily 
to instruct, but to entertain and amuse the common people of 
England who could read no French. He aspired, then, to com- 
pose an interesting "religious romance/ 1 and he succeeded; for 
the Cursor Mundi was immensely popular. We must bear in 
mind that the metrical romances, secular and religious, were the 
novels of the Middle Ages, and that the length of these narrative 
poems was a positive merit in a time of few books when men and 
women loved to hear or read an old story over and over again. 
This long Cursor Mundi of the early fourteenth century, besides 
being a storehouse of such rich and varied material as the credulous 
mediaeval mind delighted in, is in its vast scope and subject 
matter very like the great cycles of miracle plays which developed 
a little later. 

In charm and originality the greatest prose work of this period 
is the Ancren Riwle, or Rule of Anchoresses. The purpose of the 
little book is to provide spiritual counsel for three women in 
southern England who had dedicated themselves to a secluded 
religious life. The advice which the writer, a good old bishop, 
gives these recluses sounds to modern ears peculiarly quaint and 
sometimes provokes the smile of quiet humor. Among the very 
few privileges allowed these ladies, here are two: 

Ye, my dear sisters, shall have no beast except one cat. Though if any 
one must needs have a cow, let her see to it that the cow neither annoy nor 
harm anybody, nor that her own thought be too much fastened upon it. A 
nun ought not to have anything which draws her heart outward. 

The section dealing with "Speech" contains an allegorical inter- 
pretation of the scriptural words about bridling the tongue: 

A bridle is not only in the mouth of the horse, but part of it is upon his 
eyes, and part of it on his ears; for it is very necessary that all three should 
be bridled. But the iron is put in the mouth and on the light tongue; for 
there is most need to hold when the tongue is in talk, and has begun to run. 
For we often intend, when we begin to speak, to say little, and well-placed 
words; but the tongue is slippery, for it wadeth in the wet, and slideth on 
from few to many words. 



48 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



The Ancren Riwle, because of its simple, direct language, its 
pervasive human quality, and its soundness of moral tone, is a 
memorable piece of early Middle English prose literature. 

In this Anglo-Norman period many didactic poems — poems 
intended to teach a moral lesson — were written, such as "The 
Owl and the Nightingale" and "The Debate of the Body and the 
Soul." In the first poem an owl, representing the philosophic 
and religious attitude toward life, debates with a nightingale, 
representing the joyous and beautiful — the one speaking for the 
moral sense, the other for the aesthetic. The nightingale on a 
fair blossoming branch looks disdainfully at the owl on an old ivy- 
grown trunk near by : each speaker attacks the appearance, habits, 
purpose, and singing of the other. A dramatic climax is reached 
when a wren interferes and suggests that the case be submitted 
to a neighboring wise man for decision. The poem shows unusual 
dramatic power and romantic appreciation, sounds the note of 
freedom, and reveals a traveled poet of wide outlook, who, it 
may be added, inclines to side with the nightingale. "The Debate 
of the Body and the Soul" is a dialogue between the opposing sides 
of man's nature, each reproaching the other for its present plight, 
until devils appear and carry off the soul to be tortured: an im- 
pressive religious poem on an old theme, the dual nature of man, 
which has always attracted poets and novelists. 

Lyrics. — French influence stimulated song-making throughout 
England, for France was the land of troubadours upon whom had 
descended the winsome spirit of romantic legend. The English 
had their folk songs, or ballads, songs of the soil, of which we 
shall speak later; but the mingling of Norman fancy with Saxon 
sincerity resulted in a blossoming of lyric verse on springtime and 
love which is full of freshness and charm even to-day. In some 
of these songs there is a mystical blending of religion and love; 
as, for instance, in the "Love Rune" of Thomas of Hales (1250), 
a little poem on the fleeting nature of worldly wealth and glory 
and in praise of Heavenly Love. But more interesting than the 
religious lyrics of that time are the songs of youth and outdoor 
joys when nature awakes. Lightsome, "blithe and debonair" 



ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



49 



are the famous lines of the "Cuckoo Song," and straight from the 
English heart: 

Sumer is icumen in, Ihude sing, cucu; 
Groweth sed and bloweth med and springth the wude nu; 
Sing, cucu. 

Awe bleteth after iorab, Ihouth after calue cu; 
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth, murie sing, cucu. 

Cucu, cucu, 
Well singes thu, cucu; ne swik thu nauer nu. 



Summer is a-coming in, loudly sing, cuckoo; 
Groweth seed and bloweth mead and springcth the woodland 
now; 

Sing, cuckoo. 
Ewe bleateth after lamb, loweth after calf cow; 
Bullock starteth, buck darteth, merrily sing, cuckoo. 

Cuckoo, cuckoo, 
Well singest thou, cuckoo; never be thou silent now. 

Perhaps the most appealing of these lyrics of spring and love 
are the two that follow — one to "Alysoun," full of dreamy grace 
and beauty; the other redolent of flowers and almost vocal with 
bird-songs: 

Bytuene Mershe and Averil 

When spray beginneth to springe, 
The lutel foul hath hire wyi 

On hyre lud to synge; 
Ich libbe in love-longinge 
For semlokest of alle thynge. 
He may me blisse bringe; 

Icham in hire baundoun. 
An hendy hap ichabbe yhent, 
Ichot from hevene it is me sent, 
From alle wymmen mi love is lent 
And lyht on Alysoun. 



Between March and April 

When bloomy spray begins to spring, 
The little bird hath her will 

In her song to sing; 



50 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Then live I in love-longing 

For the fairest earthly thing 

That may me blessing bring — 

I am indeed her own. 

A gracious fate to me is lent, 

I know from heaven 'tis to me sent, 

From women all, my heart is bent 

And lights on Alysoun. 

—From "Alysoun" (about 1300). 

Lenten ys come with love to toune 
With blosmen and with briddes roune; 

That al this blisse bryngeth. 
Dayes-eyes in this dales; 
Notes suete of nyhtegales; 

Uch foul song singeth. 

Spring is come with love to town, 

With blossoms and with song-birds' sound; 

That all this blessing bringeth; 
Daisies in these dales, 
Sweet notes of nightingales, 

Each bird songs singeth. 

—From "Springtime" (about 1300). 

Form of Language and Verse by 1350— By the middle of the 
fourteenth century the Norman-French and the English had 
become one people with an evergrowing sense of national vigor. 
During the three centuries since the Conquest the native language 
had been transformed from a homogeneous tongue with many 
inflections and a limited and stiff vocabulary into a composite 
speech with few inflections and a rich and flexible vocabulary, 
capable, in the hands of a master, of rare grace, reach, and even 
subtlety of expression. The form of poetry had changed from 
the alliterative, heavily accented, two-part line to the end-rhyme 
verse of regular line-length and more nearly alternate stress. 
The stanza form had also become popular, through French 
models, together with various groupings of lines in stanzas. 
Some later poets — Langland, for example — still clung to the old 
alliterative verse; others, like the author of Gawayne and the 
Green Knight, mixed alliteration and rhyme; still others followed 
the French rhyming usage, but held to the English accent. These 



ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD 



51 



last, as the result proved, were the true prophets; for it is out of 
this merging of English stress and French rhyme that the wonder- 
ful lyric effectiveness of English verse has largely come. Indeed, 
the lyrics just quoted illustrate this, and they are but the earnest 
of more exquisite music. By this time, therefore, both the lan- 
guage and the poetic form were fit instruments for the use of some 
new Englishman who could by his creative genius raise one of 
the Middle English dialects out of the chaotic tangle of our me- 
diaeval speech and establish it as the standard medium of national 
literary expression. The man who was to do that was at this 
time a small boy playing in the streets of London, and his name was 
Geoffrey Chaucer. 

THE PERIOD IN OUTLINE (1066-1350) 



LITERATURE 

I. Middle English Poetry 

Layamon's Brut, (about 1205) 

Metrical Romances (four great 
cycles) : Gawayne and the Green 
Knight, The Pearl, etc. 

Moral and Religious Poems: Moral 
Ode, Cursor Mundi, Ormulum, 
Owl and Nightingale, Debate of 
Body and Soul, etc. 

Songs of Love and Spring 

II. Middle English Prose 

The Ancren Riwle (about 1215) 
Ayenbite of Inwit (Remorse of 

Conscience) 
Chronicles 



HISTORY 

Norman Conquest (Battle of Hast- 
ings), 1066 
Reign of William 1, 1066-87 

Reign of William II, Henry I, and 
Stephen, 1087-1154 

Reigns of Henry II, Richard I, 
John, Henry III, Edward I, II, 
1154-1327 

Loss of Normandy to England, 
1204 

Magna Charta, 1215 

House of Commons organized, 1265 

Battle of Bannockburn, 1314 



The Influence on Literature was Chiefly French. 



SOME USEFUL BOOKS 

Jewett's The Story of the Normans ("Stories of the Nations"), Free- 
man's Short History of the Norman Conquest, Schofield's English Liter- 



52 ENGLISH LITERATURE 

ature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer (Macmillan), Lewis's Begin- 
nings of English Literature (Ginn), Emerson's Middle English Reader 
(Macmillan), Gawayne and the Green Knight translated by Weston, The 
Pearl translated by Gollanz, Geoffrey of Monmouth's History (in Giles's 
Six Old English Chronicles— "Bonn Library") 



CHAPTER THREE 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 
1350-1400 

Fourteenth-century England. — The fourteenth century was a 
time of change. The spell of the Middle Ages was waning and 
the dawn of the new day of the Renaissance was not far off. 
The transition from the old order to the new was, as usual, 
marked by much unrest. Many things which had been regarded 
as fixed and absolute were seen to be more or less fluid and rela- 
tive. The people at large, particularly in England, were awak- 
ening from the lethargy of mediaeval modes of life and thought 
and beginning to ask questions. Restive under the restraints 
of Feudalism with its burdensome exactions and less responsive 
than of old to the glamour of Chivalry, the great middle class ; 
prosperous through expanding commerce and trade, was break- 
ing away from the established order and making a distinctive 
place for itself in the nation's life. In this century the House 
of Commons became a part of the English Parliament, and from 
that day to this has stood, with varying degrees of success, for 
the popular will. Below the middle class was the peasantry in 
rebellious protest against a condition of grinding poverty. The 
new age, we shall find, was at heart interested in secular and 
political movements rather than in religious and feudal; and this 
new interest meant a radical departure from the ideals of the 
Middle Ages. 

In England, in particular, we find the new democratic spirit 
in sharp conflict with the old political, social, and religious con- 
formity of a century or two earlier, when independence of thought 
and action was discouraged with feudal and ecclesiastical menace. 
Since those days England had changed much. In the first place, 

[53] 



54 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



the long struggle with France, known as the Hundred Years' 
War, had brought to light through action a new consciousness 
of power. Victories like Crecy and Poitiers, by uniting the Eng- 
lish nation, helped to create a new patriotism. They were all 
Englishmen now: Norman and Saxon had been welded into one 
by the pressure of war. In the next place, the factional quarrels 
of the Church, together with the notoriously corrupt lives of many 
of the clergy, caused the loss of ecclesiastical prestige to such an 
extent that kings were becoming more independent of papal 
domination, and the people distinctly distrustful of the religious 
orders. The general result of all these forms of restlessness was 
a steady growth in nationality and liberality of mind; but the 
most significant thing of all was the beginning of social democracy 
in England. This would mean the rise of a more virile and real- 
istic literature, and at no very distant day the hospitable welcome 
of new learning and new art from Italy. 

This England of Chaucer was withal a picturesque and merry 
England. The enchantment of the mediaeval world had not 
vanished yet. Men and women dressed in gay colors; lords 
were attended by their gorgeously attired retainers; pilgrims in 
motley companies wended their way to the shrines of saints; 
mailclad and helmeted knights rode in tournaments; proces- 
sions resplendent in livery lent color to the streets; every trade 
had its peculiar costume. London was a small walled city with 
narrow, winding, dirty streets and half-timbered houses painted 
in bright colors. Within these houses were great pictured tapes- 
tries along the walls and curiously carved furniture. The Thames 
was a clear and shining stream bordered by daisied meadows 
and spanned, in the town, by quaint old London Bridge with its 
towers and its shops on each side of a middle passageway leading 
across to Southwark, where stood the old Tabard Inn and the 
round wooden buildings used for bearbaiting and cockfighting. 
Throughout England were vast forests and marshes and stretches 
of wild land. Outlaws infested the highways, while deer, wolves, 
and boars still roamed the forests. It was a rough, boisterous 
life, as full of dramatic contrasts as the setting was variegated. 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 



55 



Virtue and vice jostled each other; splendor and squalor touched 
each other; coarseness, crudeness, ignorance, superstition were 
joined with refinement, beauty, learning, and saintliness. A 
motley world was this England in which Chaucer lived; and yet 
a very vital world it was, with widening human interests beyond 
the little sea-girt isle. 

GEOFFREY CHAUCER (1340-1400) 

His Life. — Chaucer was born in London about 1340. His father, John 
Chaucer, was a vintner, or wine-seller, a member of that large and increas- 
ingly important merchant class in English life. Through his business rela- 
tions with the court John Chaucer enjoyed the favor of Edward III, and 
this partly accounts for his son's early connection with the royal household. 
Geoffrey became a page at sixteen or seventeen to Princess Elizabeth, wife 
of Prince Lionel, son of King Edward III, and a year or two later joined the 
English army in the war with France, whither many ambitious youths of 
fortune and social position had hastened. He was made prisoner there at 
nineteen or twenty. Ransomed by the king after a short imprisonment, 
he returned to London and resumed his services in the royal household. 
When about twenty-seven he was pensioned for life, was attached to the 
court as 'Valet of the king's chamber" and a little later as a squire. In 
1369 he again joined the army in France. Before this date, however, Chau- 
cer had married Philippa, a maid of honor to the queen and, as it appears, 
sister to the third wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. 

Just what educational training Chaucer had meanwhile had, we do not 
certainly know; but we may be sure that he had studied Latin and French 
and such scientific books as that unscientific age afforded. Later in life 
Chaucer wrote a treatise on the Astrolabe for his "little son Lowis" which 
shows considerable knowledge of scientific subjects as they were then under- 
stood. We know that he was a wide reader and a keen observer, and the best 
part of his education must have come through his general reading, his close 
observation of the busy life about him, and his extensive travels. In France 
he had seen the romantic art of war — for the mediaeval flower of Chivalry 
was still in bloom— and at home he lived at the brilliant court of a knightly 
king. These experiences were invaluable in the educational development of 
a poet. 

After Chaucer's return from France at the age of thirty his diplomatic 
career began. During the next ten or fifteen years he was sent on a number 
of important diplomatic missions, first to Flanders, and then to Italy, visit- 
ing the famous cities of Florence, Pisa, Genoa, and Padua, all great centers 
of literature and learning. In Italy he may have met Boccaccio and Pe= 



56 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 




GEOFFREY CHAUCER 



trarch: at all events, he became deeply interested in the writings of the great 
Italian story-teller and his contemporary, the poet of lyric love; and he 
read with eager intelligence the "mystic, unfathomable song" of Dante, 
the mighty Florentine, then a half-century dead. These visits to Italy, 
the land of sentiment and of the new learning which was soon to spread 
over Europe, had a profound influence upon Chaucer, as we shall presently 
see in considering his poetry. 

Chaucer's patron during these years was the powerful John of Gaunt, 
younger son of the king, who upon the poet's return from Italy made him 
controller of the customs, an important position demanding business ability 
and experience. This office Chaucer filled with credit, showing himself a 
hard-working official and at the same time a diligent student and writer. 
This and other recognition he received from his princely patron, such as 
pensions and personal gifts and appointments on more diplomatic errands, 
until 1386 when he became a member of Parliament. About this time the 
political party of his benefactor went out of power and as a consequence 
Chaucer lost his position, became poor, gave up his house, and sold his 
pensions for ready money. The years of poverty he spent in retirement, 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 



57 



reading much, no doubt, observing with quiet humor the men and manners 
around him and writing those verse-novels, the Canterbury Tales, by which 
he is best known to-day. When in 1399 Henry IV, son of John of Gaunt, 
succeeded the weak Richard II, Chaucer sent to the new king a humorous 
little poetic appeal, "The Complaint to his Empty Purse," in response to 
which King Henry promptly granted a pension to his father's old friend. 
But the poet was to enjoy his returned prosperity for scarcely a year: in 
1400 he died and was buried in Westminster Abbey, the first of the long line 
of England's famous men to rest in the Poets' Corner of that historic church. 

His Personality. — Always an interested spectator of events and 
a keen observer of men, Chaucer was nevertheless somewhat apart 
from them, kindly but reticent. He appeared to the host of the 
Tabard to have a downward look: 

Thou lookest as thou wouldest find a hare, 
Forever upon the ground I see thee stare. 

This is the meditative attitude of an observant nature in which 
there is a blending of the man of the world, the philosopher, and 
the poet. Chaucer looked lovingly down at the daisies and other 
modest meadow flowers and listened with quiet joy to the songs 
of birds. He loved the outdoors, though much of his day was 
spent within office walls or in city streets; but when the month of 
May was come— 

Farewel my boke and my devocioun! 

After the day's work was done, impelled by the literary man's 
eagerness for reading and study, he would hasten home and pore 
upon his book, "as domb as any stone," until his eyes were dazed. 
We may think of him, therefore, as a well-poised, searching reader 
of human nature, keenly alive to the humorous elements in the 
motley throng that moved around him. His own pervasive humor, 
indeed, makes Chaucer one of the most delightful of companions; 
and because of his humor and sound sense, his personal knowledge 
of the world and his large tolerance, he looked at men and things 
with shrewd yet kindly eyes. 

His Works. — Period of French Influence. Chaucer's life is 
usually divided into three periods in accordance with the three 



58 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



predominating influences discoverable in his works — the French, 
the Italian, and the English. In his youth Chaucer must have 
read widely in the French romances: he spent some years in a 
court which was still practically French, and he was much in 
France. Naturally, therefore, he turned to French models when 
he began to write. The French poem most read and admired in 
those days in court and castle was the Roman de la Rose, a long 
and involved allegory about Love, figured as a Rose growing in 
a mystic garden and standing for a Princess Beautiful whom a 
lover, much hindered by such rivals as Hate, Envy, Jealousy, and 
other personified passions, was trying to win. This favorite 
romance Chaucer translated into English verse before his thirtieth 
year, and so far as we know this was his first serious literary work. 
It is a significant fact that at a time when French and Latin were 
the languages respectively of court and learning Chaucer, the 
friend of courtiers and scholars, should have deliberately set him- 
self to writing in the language of the people; though it was natural, 
indeed, that he should serve his apprenticeship under the influ- 
ence of the allegorical love-poetry of France by turning into his 
native speech the Romaunt of the Rose, the most popular poem of 
the Middle Ages. 

Far more important than this venture, however, is the poem 
called the Book of the Duchesse, or the Dethe of Blanche the Duch- 
esse, written as a tribute to the first wife of his patron John of 
Gaunt, Blanche of Lancaster, who died in 1369. While the Book 
of the Duchesse contains charming passages here and there — as, 
for instance, the account of the poet's awakening in his tapestried 
chamber to the music of birds' songs and the huntsmen's horns 
without, followed by the noise and movement of the hunt in the 
varied greenwood — the poem as a whole has much of the tedious- 
ness of the conventional French romances. It is in fact an imi- 
tation of Ovid and the French models, but it gives promise of 
better things. Another first fruit of Chaucer's genius is the 
"Complaint to Pity," a graceful little love poem, and there are 
besides many minor ballads in the prevailing fashion. 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 



59 



Period of Italian Influence. — From about 1370 to 1385 Chaucer 
frequently visited Italy on diplomatic business and in this way 
came directly under Italian literary influence. Several import- 
ant poems written during this period reveal how the genius of 
the poet was expanding under the inspiration he gained from 
reading the works of Dante and Boccaccio and of Dante's master, 
Virgil. Troilus and Criseyde shows the most direct Italian influ- 
ence, being a free adaptation of Boccaccio's II Filostrato (the love- 
struck one), the same theme which Shakespeare used later in 
one of his plays. Chaucer greatly improved the original poem 
not only in structural and metrical harmony but also in realistic 
tone by making it reflect the social ideals of his own age and, 
what is more important still, by infusing into it some of his own 
delightful humor and pathos. • 

The Hous of Fame and the Legende of Goode Women, two unfin- 
ished poems, also belong to this period. In the Hous of Fame 
the poet dreams that he is carried by a great eagle to the Temple 
of Fame on a high hill in a sandy waste to which come rumors 
from all over the world: the house is "writen ful of names," many 
of which disappear as the rocky ice-founclation of the hall melts; 
but the oldest names are as legible as ever. In the Legende of 
Goode Women Chaucer represents himself as viewing a procession 
of nineteen ladies and attendants which passes as he sleeps in 
his garden of daisies. The god of love, who leads Queen Alcestis 
ahead of the procession, reproaches the poet for having written 
lightly of woman in Troilus and other poems; but Alcestis, the 
ever gracious lady, reminds Cupid that Chaucer has also written 
the Book of the Duchesse and the Parlement of Foules in which 
woman is glorified. She asks that he be forgiven provided he 
will now write the story of "women true in loving all their life" 
and set forth the shame of men who were false to them. Of these 
nineteen ladies in the train of Queen Alcestis (presumably Anne 
of Bohemia, wife of Richard II) Chaucer purposed to tell the 
legends; it is likely, indeed, that he intended to include all famous 
women who had suffered, grief in love, but growing tired of his 
lengthening task he wrote of only nine. 



60 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Before he composed the Legende of Goode Women — which was 
' probably the last work of the Italian period and essentially a 
transition poem — Chaucer had written the Parlement of Foules, 
an allegory which is supposed to celebrate the marriage of King 
Richard to Anne of Bohemia in January, 1382. As usual in the 
poems of this period, the poet feigns that he dreamed the story 
he relates. In a beautiful park the birds are all assembled to 
decide which of three rival eagles shall win a fascinating female 
eagle (Anne of Bohemia), the successful suitor typifying Richard. 
The descriptive touches in this, as in the poems just mentioned, 
show Chaucer's fondness for the colorings of nature and the sounds 
of field and forest. 

Period of English Influence. — The Canterbury Tales. The 
crowning work of Chaucer's life is the collection of twenty-four 
stories known as the Canterbury Tales, belonging within the ten 
or fifteen years from 1385 when his genius had come to full matur- 
ity. By this time his English temperament had thoroughly assimi- 
lated all that was foreign in his reading, and he now turned to 
home scenes and fellow-Englishmen for setting and characters, 
though many of his plots are taken from foreign sources. Indeed 
Chaucer, like Shakespeare, usually borrowed his plots and then 
proceeded to re-create them by vitalizing them with characters 
and customs of his own day. 

The plan of the Canterbury Tales as outlined by Chaucer was 
an ambitious one, for it contemplated a group of more than one 
hundred and twenty tales strung together by prologues and epi- 
logues. Less than one fourth of this vast design was actually 
accomplished. The thirty-one or two pilgrims, including the 
poet, who set out one April morning from the Tabard Inn in 
Southwark, just across the Thames from London, on a pilgrimage 
to Canterbury, were to tell four stories each, two going and two 
returning. This was at the suggestion of Harry Bailey, the jolly 
host of the Tabard, who wished in this way to enliven the leis- 
urely journey of three or four days there and back. Moreover, 
as a stimulus to tale-telling and incidentally for the ultimate 
profit of the thrifty host himself, Bailey proposed that upon their 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 



61 



return a supper should be given at his inn to the best story-teller 
at the common expense; and to this they all agreed. The old 
town of Canterbury in Kent was a favorite resort of pilgrims, for 
in its great cathedral was the shrine of Archbishop Thomas a 
Becket, who had been murdered in 1170 and whose bones were 
popularly believed to work miraculous cures upon the sick. While 
the pilgrimage was undertaken ostensibly from a religious motive, 
in keeping with the prevalent mediaeval custom of visiting the 
shrines of saints, the main interest of Chaucer's pilgrims was no 
doubt the prospect of a spring outing with several days of good 
fellowship; for April with its "showers sweet" had come: 

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages. 

It was a democratic gathering which Chaucer joined that April 
night at the Tabard, representing all the active interests of Eng- 
lish life from knighthood to farming; and it was on just such a 
journey as this that the various classes of society could come 
together. For the time being all would lay aside their prejudices 
and antagonisms and with perfect freedom adapt themselves to 
the haps of travel. Led by the host to the tune of the miller's 
bagpipe the motley crowd of pilgrims went on their way from 
Southwark to Canterbury — 

The hooly, blisful martir for to seke 

That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke. 

Lots were drawn to determine who should tell the first tale and 
the choice fell upon the knight, of whose story of "Palamon and 
Arcite" we shall presently speak. All the tales except two are 
in verse; they follow a general prologue in which the principal 
persons of the pilgrimage are introduced. 

The Prologue. — The "Prologue" to the Canterbury Tales con- 
sists of a series of realistic character-sketches, so true to life, indeed, 
that it makes interesting reading to-day when literature is mainly 
concerned with real men and women. Up to this time literature 
had been almost altogether romantic, — that is, it had dealt with 
persons removed from the range of ordinary human experience, 



62 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



such as knightly warriors, kings, and princes — heroes of super- 
human prowess and achievement; and the reading of literature 
was largely confined to the nobility in court and castle and to 
scholars. But when Chaucer brought together a number of char- 
acters drawn from everyday life, talked familiarly about them, 
and made them talk freely of themselves and of subjects of com- 
mon interest, he made literature democratic and human, widened 
its range and its appeal. 




CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL 
The tomb of Thomasa Becket was in this cathedral. 



The men and women in the "Prologue" are individuals as well 
as types — each has a distinct personality and is, at the same time, 
representative of a class. Hitherto there had been types, but few 
real individuals; and while it is true that Chaucer does not as a 
rule give common personal names to these characters, he never- 
theless presents them so vividly and humanly that we feel they 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 



63 



actually lived. The "Pro- 
logue" is therefore a genuine 
bit of realism. Each im- 
portant vocation of contem- 
porary English society has its 
representative. There is the 
chivalrous and modest knight 
who has fought victoriously 
in Europe, Asia, and Africa; 
and his son, a young squire, 
gaily dressed, "singing and 
fluting all the day," accom- 
plished in social graces and so 
deep in love that at night he 
sleeps no more than "doth a 
nightingale.' 7 There is the coy 
and smiling prioress who af- 
fects court manners, is par- 
ticularly dainty at table, and 
so tender-hearted that she 
weeps to see a mouse caught 
in a trap; and there is the 
sleek, fat monk with sporting 
propensities who keeps fast 
horses, loves delicate food, 
and fastens his hood with a 
fancy gold pin. There is the 
merchant talking boastfully 
of his clever bargains at buy- 
ing and selling; the lawyer 
with his string of legal prece- 
dents and voluble account of 
cases won; the doctor who 
treats his patients accord- 
ing ta astrology and whose 
"studie was but litel on the 




| v 

o 

? 
i 



64 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Bible"; the shipman whose beard had been shaken with many a 
tempest; the plowman, a faithful worker who loved his neighbor 
as himself; the gossipy woman of Bath who had been five times 
married; the thieving miller with his big mouth and his bagpipe. 
All these and others Chaucer pictures to us, now with keen satire, 
now with sly humor, and now with serious admiration. Two of 
his fellow-travelers, in particular, attract him by their devotion 
and sincerity: the clerk, or scholar, of Oxford, whose zeal for 
learning was so great that he spent all the money he could get 
from his friends for books, preferring to have at his bed's head 

Twenty bookes, clad in blak and red, 
Of Aristotle and his philosophye, 

than rich robes or musical instruments; and the "poor parson of 
a town" who was rich in holy thought and work, "a shepherd 
and no mercenarie," faithfully teaching and visiting his parish- 
ioners and sharing with the poor his little income, all the time 
trying 

To drawen folk to hevene by fairnesse, 
By good ensample, this was his bisynesse. 
He wayted after no pompe and reverence, 
Ne maked him a spyced conscience, 
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, 
He taughte, but first he folwed it himselve. 

The Tales.— The twenty-four Canterbury Tales cover a wide 
range of subjects, each story being more or less adapted to the 
temperament and occupation of the supposed narrator as por- 
trayed in the "Prologue." The knight, for instance, relates the 
chivalric contest between two friends, Palamon and Arcite, for 
the hand of Emily, a fair maiden seen by the two rivals from their 
prison windows after they had been captured on the field of battle 
and taken to Athens. This is in many respects the best of the 
Canterbury Tales. Though to the modern reader it seems unduly 
long, it is well to remember that the "Knight's Tale" is only 
about one fifth as long as Boccaccio's romance from which it 
was borrowed. The prioress tells a pathetic story of the martyr- 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 



65 



dom of little Hugh of Lincoln who, after his throat was cut by 
his cruel foe, sang with clear voice "Alma Redemptoris" in praise 
of the Virgin. "The Nun's Priest's Tale" is about a lordly Chan- 
ticleer who was seized while crowing by a flattering Fox, and who 
soon turns the tables on the Fox by persuading him to open his 
mouth and hurl defiance at his pursuers, with the result that 
Chanticleer gets loose and triumphantly flies up into a tree. 
Chanticleer had, in the proud act of crowing, shut his eyes at 
the wrong time and been caught; while the Fox, as it turned out, 
had opened his mouth at the wrong moment and lost his prize. 
The moral of the fable is evident. The clerk tells the tale of 
Patient Griselda who suffered so many indignities from her hus- 
band and yet remained faithful; and the squire, as befits his youth 
and romantic disposition, tells the story of Cambuscan and the 
flying horse of brass, and the magic ring and mirror. The miller 
and the Wife of Bath being of a coarser grain relate stories of a 
less edifying nature than those of the more refined members of 
the company. 

Chaucer represents himself as telling two very tiresome tales, 
one in verse, "Sir Thopas," and the other in prose, "Melibeus. ,, 
The first is an imitation of the long-winded mediaeval romances, 
which Chaucer with malicious humor inflicts upon the company, 
until the host stops him by calling it "drasty rhyming." There- 
upon Chaucer tells a still more dreary tale. And so the story- 
telling is supposed to go on as the pilgrims wend their way to 
Canterbury. 

Chaucer's Contribution. — Chaucer was a man of affairs as well 
as a poet. Most of his life was spent in government business, 
and such leisure as he could find he gave to study and writing. 
The knowledge he gained from books was seasoned with his prac- 
tical knowledge of men and things; for the outward aspects of 
human life he had a quick eye; about the deeper meaning of it 
all he did not greatly trouble himself. Satirist of the moral and 
religious corruption of the time, Chaucer was evidently sympa- 
thetic with efforts at reform in morals and religion, though he 
himself was not a reformer. Indeed, he often appears to regard 



66 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



violations of propriety in speech and act with a sort of amused 
tolerance. Frank, robust, wholesome, he was partly mediaeval 
in temper and delighted to depict the movement and color of 
life about him without reflective comments either of strong praise 
or impassioned censure. He was, then, above all else a great 
story-teller. In the art of direct and picturesque narration few 
have equaled him and probably no one in our literature has sur- 
passed him. Compared with the rambling and more or less 
wooden romances in fashion when he began to write, the poetic 
narratives of Chaucer have artistic restraint and naturalness of 
tone; they strike one as modern and human. He combined, in 
truth, Norman grace and wit with Saxon solidity and seriousness, 
and at his best he illustrates the complete amalgamation of the 
two peoples. Chaucer's contribution is therefore immensely im- 
portant. 

First of all, he wrote lifelike, entertaining narrative character- 
ized by genuine grace, common sense, sly humor, and simple 
pathos. In the next place, he made of the East Midland dialect 
a flexible and dignified medium of expression for English-speak- 
ing people. Until Chaucer wrote, there was no one form of Eng- 
lish which all might adopt. He gave such unity and vigor to 
his own dialect that it rapidly grew into favor with those who 
read and those who wrote. In this way Chaucer's Midland 
speech became a model for imitation and so ultimately the stand- 
ard literary language of England. In the third place, Chaucer 
gave to English verse a new melody and a greater variety of form. 
In the poetry of Chaucer there are three prevailing meters, 
besides certain French stanza-forms in the minor poems. The 
most common of the three principal measures is that used in the 
Canterbury Tales, the ten-syllable line of five accents arranged 
in rhyming couplets: 

Syngyng he was or floyting al the day; 
He was as fressh as is the month of May. 

The next important meter occurs in Troilus and Criseyde. The 
lines have the same number of syllables and accents as those of 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 



67 



the Canterbury Tales, but they are arranged in seven-line stanzas 
with a different rhyme-scheme. This is called the Rhyme Royal. 
The third measure consists of lines of eight syllables, with four 
accents each, in rhyming couplets. This meter is used in the 
Book of the Duchesse: 

My wyndowes weren shet echon 
And through the glas the sunne shon 
Upon my bed with bryghte bemes, 
With many glade, gilden stremes. 

In Chaucer's language more was made of vowel sounds than 
in modern English. The final -e was regularly sounded, except 
before a vowel or h, and so was final -es. The vowels in general 
were sounded much as the vowels in modern German, while the 
consonants were pronounced approximately as in modern Eng- 
lish. Chaucer's verse should not be read with modern pronun- 
ciation if we would get the full music of the lines. With a little 
practice one may catch the lilt of the lines and their liquid effect, 
for Chaucer was a master of rhythm, the first writer to reveal the 
wonderful poetic possibilities of the English tongue. Appreci- 
atively read, he is seen to be, as Dryden remarked, "a perpetual 
fountain of good sense" and, one may add, a limpid stream of 
agreeable sound. 

CONTEMPORARIES OF CHAUCER 

Langland. — Among the several contemporaries of Chaucer who 
deserve mention in literary history, William Langland may be 
put first because of the vigor and originality of his writing. Of 
Langland's life we know very little : he was a native, as it appears, 
of one of the western counties near the Welsh border, born about 
1332. Among the peaceful Malvern Hills of Worcestershire he 
probably spent his early years as a shepherd, going up to London 
later to take some minor office in the church. Langland was of 
humble origin, though the son of a freeman; he early realized 
the unhappy condition of his own social class in the moral and 
religious corruption of the day. Independent in spirit and keenly 



68 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



sensitive to the bitter inequalities of life, he stalked through the 
London streets a gaunt, russet-clad figure, an austere prophet 
of righteousness denouncing evil and calling on men to repent. 
His own poverty, together with his growing indignation at social 
injustice, made him outspoken against the pleasure-loving and 
money-seeking time-servers all around him in State and Church. 
By 1362 Langland had written an allegorical poem called The 
Vision Concerning Piers the Plowman. This he later revised and 
extended, so that in its final form the poem is three times the 
original length. The poet represents himself as having fallen 
asleep one May morning on Malvern Hills: 

Me byfel a ferly 1 of fairy me thoughte; 

I was wery forwandred 2 and went me to reste 

Under a brode banke bi a bornes 3 side, 

And as I lay and lened and loked in the wateres, 

I slombred in a slepyng, it sweyved 4 so merye. 

Thanne gan I to meten 6 a merveilouse swevene 6 ; 

I seigh 6 a toure on a toft trielich 7 ymaked; 

A depe dale binethe, a dongeon thereinne, 

With depe dyches and derke and dredful of sight. 

A faire felde ful of folke fonde I there bytwene, 

Of alle manner of men, the mene and the riche. 

The "fair field full of folk" is the world, in which all sorts of 
people are carrying on their own selfish vocations and seeking 
the favor of Lady Meed (Reward or Bribery), the symbol of 
social gr3ed. Those who really do honest work have the fruits 
of their toil snatched away and wasted by idlers whom a corrupt 
society encourages. Then follows a vision of the Seven Deadly 
Sins who surround Piers (Peter) the Plowman beseeching him to 
show them the way to Truth or God. Piers, intent upon his plow- 
ing, sets them to work. Only through work can they find Truth 
and escape Hunger. Later visions deal with the true motives of 
the moral and religious life. Piers the simple plowman gradually 
develops until he is made to represent Christ; and with his tri- 
umph over death the poem ends. The dreamer awakes as the 
joyous Easter bells are ringing. 

J wonder. * weary with wandering. * brook's. * sounded. 5 dream. 6 saw. ? choicely. 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 



69 



The poem of Piers the Plowman is an indictment and a protest — - 
a vigorous arraignment of individual, social, and religious evil, 
and a call to clean and industrious living. It is a plea for the 
equality of man and the nobility of labor. Langland used the 
old Saxon alliterative meter which was still familiar to the popular 
ear, though already out of fashion, as we have seen. As a literary 
artist he is far inferior to Chaucer, lacking his grace and charm, 
his sense for structure, and his ability to tell a story entertainingly. 
Langland was primarily a reformer, speaking out bluntly in the 
older poetic form for the English conscience. 

Wyclif. — John Wyclif, like Langland, made his appeal to the 
common people rather than to the privileged classes. Wyclif 
was himself a great scholar and theologian, educated at the Uni- 
versity of Oxford and for a time Master of Balliol College. He 
clearly perceived the need of the people for religious instruction 
in their own tongue, and he accordingly taught them himself in 
sermons and tracts and sent out priests clad in coarse russet and 
carrying staves in their hands after the primitive apostolic man- 
ner. These wandering priests, or Lollards, preached to the people 
a simple and vital faith. Wyclif opposed the temporal power of 
the Church, even advocating the appropriation by the State of 
Church property. He was thus a religious reformer, a forerunner 
of Luther and the Protestant Reformation. Realizing that the 
Church was neglecting the people, he determined to put the Bible 
into their hands in their own speech as their immediate guide in 
religion. He accordingly set to work to translate the entire Bible 
into English, associating with himself a learned disciple, Nicholas 
of Hereford. With his aid the great task was accomplished before 
Wyclif s death in 1384. This translation from the Latin Vulgate, 
revised and simplified a few years later by John Purvey, has come 
down to us as the first great monument of our prose, fully entitling 
Wyclif to be called "father of English prose. " 

By putting the Bible into the hands of the people Wyclif 
rendered an invaluable service to literature, for a model of direct 
and simple prose was sorely needed in this time of dialects. The 
popularity of Wyclifs translation of the Scriptures rapidly made 



70 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



for uniformity in spoken and written English. It is indeed the 
first of the several translations of the Bible, culminating in the 
King James Version of 1611, which have wrought themselves 
into the very bone and sinew of our language and literature. 
Aside from its literary value, the work of John Wyclif exerted 
an immense influence upon the religious and social conditions 
of England at a time of great unrest among an overburdened 
populace by emphasizing afresh the rights of the individual. 

Gower. — Quite different in form and spirit from Langiand's 
and Wyclif s is the work of the poet John Gower (1325-1408), 
the wealthy aristocrat and conservative. Although an extensive 
landholder in Kent, Gower spent most of his life in London where 
he was known at court. In later life he retired to the monastery 
connected with St. Mary's Church in Southwark, now St. Sav- 
iour's, where his sculptured recumbent figure above his tomb may 
still be seen, his head resting upon his three volumes. One of 
his books was written in Latin, one in French, and one in English, 
the poet evidently being uncertain which of the three languages 
would turn out to be standard in England. His English work, 
Confessio Amantis (The Lover's Confession), is a series of stories 
about a lover who makes confession to a priest of Venus, the 
framework of which is modeled after the famous mediaeval alle- 
gory, the Roman de la Rose. The characters are abstractions 
rather than living men and women; and while some of the stories 
are well told and the verse is polished and regular, the work as a 
whole is exceedingly tedious and therefore vastly inferior to 
Chaucer's. Gower looked backward too steadily to understand 
and vitally to reflect his own age: in his mind the peasants' 
revolts, the religious agitation, the general social restlessness, 
created only consternation; he was unable to read the signs of 
the times. 

"Mandeville's Travels." — An entertaining volume of marvelous 
sights in distant lands, purporting to have been written by one 
Sir J ohn Mandeville, appeared in the latter half of the fourteenth 
century and made a strong appeal to the popular fancy. The 
book seems to be a compilation from the works of Marco Polo 



THE AGE OF CHAUCER 



71 



and other famous travelers, ancient and mediaeval, and "John 
Mandeville" about as fictitious a character as Gulliver or Rob- 
inson Crusoe. Whoever the compiler may have been, the book 
speaks for itself most delightfully; it was widely read and copied 
in an age which was almost childish in its thirst for wonders. 
Its great popularity is attested by the fact that three hundred 
manuscript copies are extant. The author does not claim to 
have seen all the marvels of which he tells, but those which he 
has seen he vouches for with naive simplicity; others have come 
to him by report, and as to the truth of these he leaves the reader 
to judge for himself. He says that he passed through Tartary, 
Persia, Armenia, Lybia, Chaldea, Ethiopia, Amazonia, India, and 
various islands in those regions. He saw or heard of pygmies, 
giants, valleys of devils thick as grasshoppers, dragons, griffins, 
men with heads beneath their shoulders, fields of diamonds, the 
Terrestrial Paradise, and the wonderful land of Prester John, and 
many other extraordinary beings and countries. As "Sir John" 
intended his book to be a guide for pilgrims to Jerusalem, he pre- 
fixed a pious prologue to his diverting romance. Originally writ- 
ten in French, the volume as we have it is a clever translation 
into a prose which has distinct literary flavor and which no doubt 
afforded a welcome relief from the dry historical and theological 
prose of the day. 



72 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 
THE PERIOD IN OUTLINE (1350-1400) 



LITERATURE 

I. Later Middle English 

Poetry 

Chaucer (1340-1400) : French 
Period (Book of the Duchesse) 
Italian Period (Legende of Goode 
Women), English Period (Can- 
terbury Tales) 
William Langland: Piers the 

Plowman 
John Gower: Confessio Amantis 

II. Later Middle English 

Prose 

John Wyclif: Translation of the 

Bible (1384) 
"Sir John Mandeville" : Travels 



HISTORY 
Reign of Edward III, 1327-1377 
Reign of Richard II, 1377-1399 
Battle of Crecy, 1346 
English capture Calais, 1347 

Beginning of Hundred Years' War 
with France, 1338 

Black Death, 1349 

Rise of the "Lollards," followers 
of Wyclif (beginners of Reforma- 
tion in England), 1378 

Wat Tyler's Rebellion, 1381 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS: Decline of Feudalism; Rise of the Mid- 
dle Class ; Norman and Saxon Welded into One ; Signs of the Coming 
Renaissance and Reformation; The Beginning of Modern English in 
Chaucer. 



SOME USEFUL BOOKS 

Browne's Chaucer's England, Jusserand's English Wayfaring Life in the 
Fourteenth Century, Snell's The Age of Chaucer (Macmillan), Jenks's In 
the Days of Chaucer (Barnes), Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer, Ward's 
Life of Chaucer (in "English Men of Letters"), Pollard's Chaucer Primer 
(Macmillan), Root's The Poetry of Chaucer (Houghton), Lowell's Essay 
on Chaucer (in "My Study Windows"), The Globe Chaucer (Macmillan), 
Warren's Piers Plowman Modernized, Sergeant's Wyclif ("Heroes of the 
Nation"), Mandeville's Travels ("CasselFs National Library") 



CHAPTER FOUR 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION PERIOD 
From the Death of Chaucer to the Accession of Elizabeth 
1400-1558 

The Fifteenth Century: Beginnings of the Renaissance. — 

Political, social, and religious changes which had begun in the four- 
teenth century became well-denned movements during the 
hundred and fifty years following the death of Chaucer. Wars 
foreign and domestic engaged the thoughts and energies of the 
English nation, while political uprisings like Cade's Rebellion and 
religious revolt through the activities of the Lollards were upset- 
ting the old order. The Hundred Years' War with France, though 
at first stimulating to English patriotism, finally resulted in the 
loss of France to England; the Wars of the Roses, that fierce 
factional strife between the houses of York and Lancaster, resulted 
in the death of Feudalism as a political influence in England; 
with the accession of the Tudors dawned an era of remarkable 
commercial and industrial prosperity; with the overthrow of the 
feudal nobility came a period of rest after the volcanic confusion 
of a century of turmoil. The land at last had peace and England 
was ready to benefit from the two most significant movements 
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Renaissance and the 
Reformation. The Renaissance was, strictly speaking, the re- 
birth of interest in the Greek and Roman classics; more broadly 
interpreted, the Renaissance means the transition from mediae- 
val to modern ways of thinking, a movement toward the 
liberation of mind and spirit from the narrowness of the Middle 
Ages. The Reformation was a movement for greater religious 
freedom, culminating in England in the dissolution of the monas- 

[73] 



74 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



teries and the separation from the Church of Rome in the reign 
of Henry VIII, during the first half of the sixteenth century. 

The Renaissance found its earliest development in Italy, where 
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a remarkable group 
of writers, painters, and sculptors gave expression to the new 
enthusiasm for learning and art. Petrarch, poet and scholar, 
was leader in the revival of interest in the classics. A diligent 
student of antiquity and an enthusiastic interpreter of the classic 
spirit, he was the first of the Humanists, — a name applied to 
those who believed that a more liberal culture would come from 
the study of Greek and Latin literature than from devotion to 
mediaeval scholasticism with its barren logic and deadening 
philosophy. In painting and sculpture the Renaissance spirit 
manifested itself most notably in the wonderful creations of 
Raphael and Michael Angelo. In Italy this new liberalism, or 
widening of human interests, was chiefly literary and artistic; 
in Germany it was mainly religious, and showed itself in the 
successful struggle of Martin Luther for greater spiritual free- 
dom. 

The event, however, which gave impetus to the revival of 
learning in western Europe was the capture of Constantinople 
by the Turks in 1453. That city, the capital of the eastern 
part of the Roman Empire, was the storehouse of Greek litera- 
ture after the fall of Rome and the residence of Greek scholars. 
Upon the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, many of these 
scholars fled to Italy taking with them their precious manuscripts. 
In this way an immense stimulus was given to the study of Greek 
literature not only in Italy but over western Europe in general 
Two main streams of influence from the Renaissance, therefore, 
flowed into England — the literary and artistic from Italy, and the 
religious from Germany; but because of the disturbed political 
conditions of the fifteenth century the Renaissance did not find 
its fullest expression in England until the latter part of the six- 
teenth century. It is true that Chaucer had felt the impulses 
of the new literature in Italy and that Wyclif had spoken out for 
religious reform; but they were simply pioneers of the Renaissance 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION PERIOD 75 



while England as a whole was not yet ready to welcome it unre- 
servedly. 

Inventions and Discoveries. — In various other directions this 
awakening of the human mind from the lethargy of the Middle 
Ages is clearly shown. The Renaissance was in truth a manifold 
movement, inspired by a fresh and even fierce intellectual curi- 
osity which made men eager for light on the mysteries of their 
little world and for accurate knowledge of distant lands about 
which faint rumors had come to them. The mediaeval world was 
small, centering about the Mediterranean Sea: of regions to the 
west beyond the Pillars of Hercules nothing was known and little 
was dreamed. The fifteenth century was to be a period of growing 
emancipation from the fetters of tradition. The invention of 
printing in the first half of the century meant that books would 
take the place of manuscripts, laboriously copied and slowly 
circulated, and be scattered broadcast over Europe diffusing 
knowledge everywhere. Probably no other invention has meant 
so much for the human race as the invention of the printing press. 
Discoveries of one kind and another extended men's horizons. 
Daring seamen from Portugal and Spain were discovering new 
lands and new routes to old lands : Columbus found a new world 
and Vasco da Gama a new road to India. The Prussian astronomer 
Copernicus in the early years of the next century set forth the 
theory that bears his name, completely upsetting the old concep- 
tion of the position, shape, and size of the earth. 

How startling these discoveries were to an age which was accus- 
tomed to mediaeval ways of thinking, we who live in a time of 
scientific triumphs find it difficult to imagine. The boundaries 
of knowledge were enlarged as if by magic; literature was enriched 
and humanized; the imagination was filled with splendid visions 
of conquest and exploration. The stimulus thus given to the 
mental life of continental Europe was felt in England first at 
the universities, particularly at Oxford, where a group of reformers 
gave themselves with rare devotion to the study and teaching of 
Greek. The inspiration had come from Italy whither William 
Grocyn had gone to study under two famous classical scholars. 



76 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Grocyn returned to Oxford and began the teaching of Greek with 
such contagious enthusiasm that Oxford soon became famous as 
the center of the new learning in England. Hither came the great 
Erasmus from Holland to study, and here he found John Colet 
and Thomas More, men of vigorous minds and lofty characters 
who aroused the two universities from their mediaeval slumbers 
and profoundly influenced the general educational, social, and 
religious ideals of England. Even more important, however, as a 
radiating center of Renaissance culture was the court of Henry 
VIII, who encouraged literature and art and affected the splendor 
of Italian architecture, dress, and manners. 

Followers of Chaucer. — Of genuine literary activity, however, 
the century after Chaucer is comparatively barren. Men's 
minds were too full of the stirring march of outward events to 
find leisure for meditation and literary expression. The few 
writers of the early fifteenth century were looking backward at 
the vanishing glories of mediaevalism. Devoted to Chaucer as 
their " Fader dere and maister reverent," two of these, JOHN 
LYDGATE and THOMAS HOCCLEVE, strove to imitate him in 
several long poems. Lydgate's Story of Thebes, based on Boccaccio 
and Statius, is told as if it were one of the Canterbury Tales; Hoc- 
cleve's Gouvernail of Princes, written for Henry V when Prince 
of Wales, is of present interest because it contains the well-known 
portrait of Chaucer already mentioned. Hoccleve was personally 
acquainted with Chaucer and sincerely attached to him as a 
disciple. But these two Chaucerians were lacking in originality, 
and they have fallen into the oblivion which sooner or later 
comes to imitators. 

More vigorous than these was JAMES I OF SCOTLAND, author 
of The KingisQuair (King's Book) written in the ''rhyme royal." 
Imprisoned when a small boy by the English king, Prince James 
spent eighteen years in England. Here he read Chaucer and 
Gower; and after he returned to Scotland, remembering his Eng- 
lish models, he turned into verse the story of his love for Lady 
Jane Beaufort, his future queen. Other Scotch poets, later in 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION PERIOD 77 



the century and less under Chaucerian influence, are WILLIAM 
DUNBAR and GAWAIN DOUGLAS, in whom may be found that 
love of nature and that patriotic spirit which constitute the chief 
charm of the poetry of Scotland. 

The Ballads. — The fifteenth century, while lacking in high 
poetic inspiration, was a great ballad-making epoch. The ballad 
proper is a popular narrative poem " without any known author 
or any marks of individual authorship such as sentiment and 
reflection/' 1 originally meant to be sung. Ballads voice the oral 
traditions of a people and their undying poetic instinct; and the 
prevalence of ballads at this time shows that the making of 
poetry and the love of it had not ceased in this strenuous transition 
period. Ballad-making went on, of course, before the fifteenth 
century and to a limited extent after that; indeed, popular ballads 
of some sort were sung from the earliest times. The ballad, how- 
ever, as just defined, was the outgrowth of conditions which soon 
after the fifteenth century ceased to be favorable for the produc- 
tion of folk poetry. These ballads, of which over three hundred 
have come down to us, are in general stories of battle or love or 
adventure, arranged in four-line stanzas of four and three accents, 
made up of legend and history and orally transmitted. Later they 
were written out and finally arranged in collections, but nobody 
knows the authors; indeed, they "just grew" as expressions of 
community sentiment, and were intended for the ear and not 
for the eye. Their artlessness and simplicity and their close hold 
on nature give to these old ballads a perennial charm. 

In some of them, straightforward and simple though they be, 
there are strains of genuine pathos together with a feeling for the 
tragedy of human life. Patriotic emotion animates the stirring 
ballad of "Chevy Chace" in which Scottish Douglas contends 
with English Percy; the refreshing breath of the greenwood is 
felt in the story of the outlaw Robin Hood and Sherwood 
Forest; unyielding courage thrills through the account of the 
fight of "Johnnie Armstrong" and his "merry men" against the 



1 Gummere (Ballads: Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit., II, p. 449.) 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 




Scottish king; through the simple tale of the shipwreck of "Sir 
Patrick Spens" with his bold sailors and the lament of their wait- 
ing wives there is the deepening sense of woe ; and in the love story 
of the hapless "Fair Margaret and Sweet William'' is the note of 
weird pathos. These are several of the most famous. If one would 
get at the real spirit of these heart songs of the people, one must 
read widely in them. The ballad is a distinct and highly signifi- 
cant species of poetic utterance in the development of our liter- 
ature. 

"^mr^L <B* fa wMMty fa%t<£te « fftjtttgfe 
my of fa ffy%>(o$$m cnpsgnfcfc? /% me $*{Eta^ 
<Cat?&9 a( ttftmtfix fa of out: Cb*ty 
4ME&Jt$fy $ to §W M i« &ft ftmf&ftty ou* of 

of@»(bgof4i 

2f& of fy$t/&tfininuimty *u*tfoiit of fa fitcp ayfp 
Mc\ut /fc* m fyty Jto* fa n) fa* $ogame of 
Cttg&Htg Cowwwik of mg of f afcs 

SPECIMEN OF CAXTON'S PRINTING, 1477 

William Caxton and Printing. — Reference has already been made 
to the invention of the printing press and the wider diffusion of 
knowledge which resulted. The first books were printed in Ger- 
many, which honors Gutenberg of Mainz as the inventor of 
printing, though Holland persistently claims to be the birthplace 
of that art. The man who introduced the printing press into 
England was William Caxton, a native of Kent, who had been 
engaged in business in the Netherlands a number of years before 
he became a printer. In 1471 he visited Cologne and there saw 
for the first time a printing press at work. Caxton was a man of 
good education and with a decided liking for literature. Impressed 
with the possibilities of the new art, he set up a press at Bruges 
and there, under noble patronage, he issued in 1475 the translation 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION PERIOD 79 



of a French book, the Historie of Troye, the first book to be printed 
in English. 

In 1476 Caxton returned to England and set up his printing 
press at Westminster within the precincts of the Abbey, where 
he published the next year The Dictes and Sayings of the Philoso- 
phers, translated from the French by Lord Rivers and edited by 
Caxton himself. This was the first book printed in England. 
During the next fifteen years the Westminster printer issued 
numerous books, some of which were translations by himself, 




CAXTON SHOWING A SPECIMEN OF HIS PRINTING TO EDWARD IV 



while others were well-known English works. By printing 
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Gower's Confessio Amantis, and 
Malory's Morte d' Arthur, Caxton rendered a distinguished service 
to English literature and may justly be called the friend and 
promoter of letters. His own prefaces to many of the books he 
printed show that Caxton had a romantic vein in him as well as 
a refreshing sense of humor, and that he followed his vocation 
with the sagacity of a business man and at the same time with 
something of the idealism of the artist. 



80 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Malory's Morte d' Arthur. — The most interesting prose work 
of the fifteenth century, and one of the most delightful books in 
all literature, is the Morte d' Arthur (Death of Arthur) of Sir 
Thomas Malory, which Caxton printed in 1485. According to 
Caxton the Morte d' Arthur was written about 1470, but of Sir 
Thomas Malory we know little except that he must have been 
a country gentleman of an ancient Warwickshire family. Malory 



and during the Middle Ages a vast network of legends had 
formed around the Celtic hero and his knights. It is remarkable 
how coherent a narrative Malory was able to string together 
out of such a tangled mass of legendary lore; it is still more re- 
markable that he should have succeeded in making so vivid and 
human these shadowy figures of mediaeval romance. 

The Morte oV Arthur is more than a mosaic of adaptations: the 
individuality and elevation of its style, the cadence of its diction, 
and the imaginative splendor of its pictures, entitle it to be called 
a great literary creation, an enchanting prose-poem. It is the 
one great prose work which, looking backward at the fast reced- 
ing days of feudalism, gathers up and preserves the varied pa- 
geantry of a mediaeval world with its battles and tournaments 
and castles. Here we find "many joyous and pleasant histories, 




ILLUSTRATION FROM MALORY'S 
MORTE D'ARTHUR 



found his material in va- 
rious French romances 
dealing with the Arthurian 
legends; and this confused 
material he arranged in a 
more orderly narrative 
around the great figure of 
King Arthur, with the 
quest of the Holy Grail as 
the unifying motive of the 
action. The story of King 
Arthur had been a favorite 
one, as we have seen, from 
the days of Geoffrey of 
Monmouth and Layamon, 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION PERIOD bl 



and noble and renowned acts of humanity, gentleness, and chiv- 
alry," to quote from Caxton, who naively continues: "And for 
to pass the time this book shall be pleasant to read in, but for 
to give faith and belief that all is true that is contained therein, 
ye be at your liberty." All the generations since have found 
Malory's book "pleasant to read in." To it Tennyson went for 
material and inspiration when he would tell the deeds of Arthur 
and his fellowship of knights and ladies in The Idylls- of the King, 
and other poets earlier and later have done the same. It has 
furnished the modern mind with a greater wealth of familiar 
legend than any other book before the days of Elizabeth. For- 
tunate indeed is that young person who early makes the acquaint- 
ance of Malory's Morte oV Arthur, that wonderland of romance. 

Prose: More, Ascham, and Tyndale. — While the great prose 
romance of Malory was mediaeval in tone, the spirit of the Renais- 
sance was nevertheless manifesting itself in England in the later 
years of the fifteenth century ; during the first half of the sixteenth 
century it was abroad in the land. The new prose reflected the 
awakened interest in social, political, educational, and religious 
reform by revealing a discontent with the old order and a sincere as- 
piration for a more enlightened society. The most accomplished of 
the pioneers of the English Renaissance was SIR THOMAS MORE, 
who has already been mentioned among the Oxford reformers. 
Scholar, lawyer, and statesman, More was one of the most brilliant 
and versatile men of his time. Although he spent much of his 
life in political service, he kept to its tragic close his early enthusi- 
asm for learning and culture. Of that small band of devoted 
humanists who relighted the torch of learning at the English 
universities and kept it burning, he was the one real man of 
letters. More's Utopia (Nowhere), which appeared in 1516, is 
the account of an ideal commonwealth in which men are free, 
enlightened, and fraternal. There are no social wrongs in this 
imaginary island, about which a companion of Amerigo Vespucci 
in his travels westward is represented as telling the author: 
justice, common sense, desire for the general good, make life 
peaceful and fruitful. The Utopia is at once a protest against 



82 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



contemporary social conditions and a dream of perfection. So 
concrete is the narrative, so practical seems the law of liberty 
and equality, that we wonder why through the centuries the 
growth of the spirit of human brotherhood has been so slow. 
Many of the social and political reforms which More suggested 
have of course long ago been put into practice; others still exist 
only in the Kingdom of Nowhere. The Utopia was written in 
Latin, but was almost immediately translated into English and 
other European languages and enjoyed an immense popularity. 
It still holds its own as one of the world's classics. 

Less important than More but worthy of mention as contributing 
to the educational side of the Renaissance was ROGER ASCHAM, 
scholar and teacher, and for a time tutor of Princess Elizabeth, 
later queen. His Toxophilus (1545) is a treatise on archery, an 
exceedingly popular sport in the sixteenth century. Ascham dis- 
cusses at length the science of archery and its importance as a 
manly art tending to develop sound health and a vigorous national 
life. His later work is The Schoolmaster, in which he sets forth 
his views on education, some of them modern enough to have 
been written yesterday. He believed first of all that between 
teacher and pupil there should exist a cordial sympathy. His 
insistence on outdoor sports, character-building as the aim of 
education, and sound classical training, shows that he was a 
genuine Englishman as well as a thorough humanist. 

The books of More and Ascham were mainly for the aristocracy 
with whom in general were their sympathies. There was need, 
however, for a simpler, more direct prose which would appeal to the 
common people, as Wyclif's Bible had done a hundred and fifty 
years before. Since then the Reformation had become a great 
vitalizing movement in Germany; and now the political separation 
of Henry VIII (1534) from the Roman Church meant the triumph of 
the Reformation in England. About this time WILLIAM TYNDALE 
and Miles Coverdale translated the Bible into strong idiomatic 
English, though Tyndale had himself as early as 1525, in the face 
of opposition from Church and State, translated from the original 
Greek parts of the New Testament. This new translation by 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION PERIOD 83 



Tyndale and Coverdale became the basis of later versions of the 
Scriptures and profoundly influenced English prose. 

The New Poetry: Wyatt and Surrey. — The oncoming tide of 
the Renaissance brought still greater changes to English poetry 
than to prose. Since the days of Chaucer there had appeared 
no poets of real distinction; and Chaucer himself, it will be remem- 
bered, drew his earlier inspiration from France and Italy, but 
the Italian influence had proved more fruitful. And so it happens 
again that poetic impulse comes fresh from Italy, the land of 
sonnets and the home of Petrarch and Dante. The establish- 
ment of a strongly centralized dynasty after the close of the Wars 
of the Roses had induced a feeling of security, and England under 
Henry VIII was again coming in touch with the nations of the 
continent, particularly with the intellectual life of Italy. The 
Tudor king, as we have seen, was ambitious to shine as the patron 
of letters and art and to make his court the center of the new 
culture. His courtiers visited Italy and returned full of enthusi- 
asm for her poetry. Making poems soon became an elegant 
accomplishment at the English court. Indeed, it may be said 
that every educated man tried his hand at versifying, and if 
his production pleased it was carefully copied and passed around 
among his friends. 

In 1557 appeared a printed collection of these courtier-poems, 
known to us as TotteVs Miscellany because Richard Tottel was 
the publisher. TotteVs Miscellany is the first collection of miscel- 
laneous English poems ever printed and marks the beginning of a 
new kind of poetry in England. The chief contributors to this 
volume were SIR THOMAS WYATT and HENRY HOWARD, EARL 
OF SURREY, accomplished men of courtly temperament and train- 
ing. Wyatt, the older of the two, was sent on diplomatic missions 
to France, the Netherlands, and Italy. In Italy he read much of 
the popular amorous verse for which that country had long been 
famous, particularly the sonnets of Petrarch addressed to Laura, 
the lady of his love. Wyatt translated a few of these Petrarchian 
<onnets into English and then composed a number of sonnets and 
love lyrics more or less in the Italian fashion. He introduced into 



84 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



English poetry the sonnet, that fourteen-line miniature, at once 
the most exacting and the most artistic of lyric forms. Surrey, 
Wyatt's younger contemporary, had also read widely in the poetry 
of Italy, having spent much time on the continent in military 
service. Though less original and vigorous than Wyatt, he was 
more polished and graceful in manners and verse and imitated 
Petrarch with greater ease and finish. Surrey was the first English 
writer to use blank verse, employing it in his translation of two 
books of Virgil's Aeneid. Surrey's blank verse is somewhat stiff 
and wooden, as might be expected in a pioneer effort, but it was 
the significant beginning of what was destined to become the 
favorite form of poetic expression in English literature. Wyatt 
and Surrey, then, brought into England the Italian sonnet and 
graceful love lyric, and so furnished a new form and fresh inspira- 
tion to the early Elizabethans; Surrey wrote blank verse, and was 
thus the precursor of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Milton, who 
gave it permanence and distinction. With the publication in 
1557 of TotteVs Miscellany, English literature again becomes a 
part of the broad stream of European culture, and the Renaissance 
will soon reach flood tide in the splendid creations of the Eliza- 
bethans. 



RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION PERIOD 
THE PERIOD IN OUTLINE (1400-1558) 



85 



LITERATURE 

I. Poetry 

Chaucer's Disciples: John Lyd- 
gate (Story of Thebes), Thomas 
Hoccleve (Gouvernail of Prin- 
ces) 

Scotch Poets: James I (King's 
Quair), William Dunbar, Gawain 
Douglas 

The Ballads: Chevy Chace, Robin- 
Hood, etc. 

Wyatt and Surrey: Tottel's Mis- 
cellany (1557) (Sonnet and blank 
verse introduced) 

II. Prose 

Malory's Morte d' Arthur (1470) 
William Caxton, first English 
Printer: Dictes and Sayings of 
the Philosophers, first book 
printed in England (1477) 
More's Utopia 

Ascham's Toxophilus and School- 
master 

Tyndale's New Testament (1525) 



HISTORY 

Henry IV, V, VI, 1399-1461 

Batle of Agincourt, 1415 

Edward IV, V, 1461-1483 

Richard III, Henry VII, 1483-1509 

Wars of the Roses, 1455-1485 

The Turks capture Constantinople; 
scholars flee to Italy with Greek 
manuscripts, 1453 

Invention of Printing, about 1450 

Age of Greatest Artists in Italy: 
Raphael, Michael Angelo, Leon- 
ardo da Vinci 

America Discovered, 1492 

Henry VIII, 1509-1547 

Reformation in Germany (Luther), 
1520 

Act of Supremacy: Separation 
from the Roman Church, 1534 

Reigns of Edward VI, and Mary, 
1547-1558 



The Renaissance and the Reformation Stimulate the English Mind. 



SOME USEFUL BOOKS 

Denton's England in the Fifteenth Century, Field's An Introduction to the 
Study of the Renaissance, Flower's The Century of Sir Thomas More, 
Saintsbury's Elizabethan Literature (Macmillan), Malory's Morte d' Arthur 
("Everyman's Library"), More's Utopia ("Everyman's Library"), Lanier's 
Boy's King Arthur (Scribner), Gummere's Old English Ballads (Ginn) 



CHAPTER FIVE 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 

1558-1625 

The Flood Tide of the Renaissance 

The New Nationalism. — The reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558- 
1603) marks the beginning of the modern era in English history. 
It was a time of splendid vitality in the nation. All classes were 
for the first time united in a spirit of patriotic pride at the steady 
growth of England's greatness. The nation had become a world 
power of first rank and her people were thrilled with a new sense 
of strength. Increased prestige abroad, security at home, growing 
numbers, improved agricultural conditions, expanding commerce, — 
all these meant an abounding material prosperity. Old factional 
divisions had disappeared in the larger individual freedom and 
fuller national life. The religious disturbances of the reigns of 
Henry VIII and Mary had given place to a policy of religious 
toleration under Elizabeth, so that Catholics and Protestants 
could now work together for a common country. The wisdom 
of this tolerant attitude of the queen was conspicuously justified 
in the outcome of the famous attack of the Spanish Armada in 
1588. At this critical juncture in the nation's life, when division 
would have meant ruin, all Englishmen regardless of religious 
affiliation united in support of their queen and native land. It 
was a magnificent object-lesson in patriotism. This memorable 
victory over Spain inspired the people with the confidence of 
youth; nothing now seemed impossible; enthusiasm ran high; the 
new consciousness of independence made the nation 

"strong in will 
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." 
[86] 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



87 



New Intellectual Interests. — Great as was the growth of Eng- 
land in material comforts and in the social contentment which 
comes from peace and plenty, more marvelous still was her intel- 
lectual development. Domestic security gave the nation leisure 
for thinking and dreaming, not idly but always constructively. 
A noble restlessness and an insatiable curiosity would not let men 
think the old thoughts, but drove them to investigation and to 
travel on land and sea. Hardy seamen like Drake and Gilbert 
set out in tiny boats on perilous voyages of discovery; courtiers 
like Raleigh would plant colonies and seek for Eldorados in 
western lands; others, like Hakluyt, fired with a passion for explo- 
ration from reading thrilling books of adventure and unable to 
leave England, made collections of the voyages and discoveries 
of noted navigators. There was no fabled strand of gold too far 
away for these daring Englishmen to seek; no seas too rough, no 
wilderness too dense, no savage tribe too fierce, to daunt their 
unconquerable wills. Their deeds and their still greater dreams 
stir the imagination to-day and make the blood flow faster in our 
veins. 

As there was no distant land toward which they did not look 
with longing eyes, so there was no realm of knowledge into which 
they did not desire to penetrate. "I have taken all knowledge 
to be my province," said young Francis Bacon with splendid 
audacity. The dream of the alchemist that he could turn all 
baser metals into gold is typical of the imperial imagination of 
these explorers into mind and matter. The mental horizons of 
Englishmen were enormously enlarged. Education felt the quick- 
ening impulse, and as a result free grammar schools were established 
throughout England in which the great middle class might hav^ 
better training. The standard of national intelligence was in this 
way raised many degrees, for now the new classical learning was 
reaching the masses of the people. The creation of literature 
would in consequence no longer be largely confined to the nobility, 
but the virile middle class would furnish the new writers and 
multitudes of readers. The throb of a quicker life was in the 
nation's heart and a livelier zest for knowledge stimulated the 



88 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



popular mind, for England was at last feeling the full effects of 
the Renaissance. 

The Joy of Living. — This imperious energy showed itself still 
more generally in the exuberant joy and outward splendor of life. 
Fondness for rich dress, gorgeous trappings, elaborate spectacles, 
lively outdoor sports, dancing and music, magnificent pageants, 
gave to Elizabethan life such dash and color, such irrepressible^ 



buoyancy, as no other period of English history can lay claimvto, 
The center of it all was the queen who, despite her faults, was the 
embodiment of the vital spirit of this bewildering age of action 
and lavish magnificence. Elizabeth was herself expert in all polite 
accomplishments, the inspirer of poet and musician in devising 
spectacular entertainments to delight the eye and ear. Her vanity, 
her violent temper, her frequent deviations from truth and pro- 
priety, were all forgiven in the light of her extraordinary ability 
by a people to whom extravagance of speech and action seemed 
only the natural expression of overflowing vitality. To the 
popular mind no doubt there was, besides, about the personality 
of the queen something of the glamour of romance that won their 
chivalric devotion. She made many triumphal progresses through 
her island kingdom, the guest at costly banquets, at prolonged 
and elaborate revels such as the entertainment given by Leicester 
at Kenilworth in 1575; at other times, she was the central figure 
in gorgeous street-processions or in a gaily decked barge leading 
a little fleet of pleasure boats along the ' 'silver-streaming Thames"; 
at all times, wherever she moved she was the "observed of all 
observers," popular and yet masterful. 

As was the queen so were the people: the nation as a whole 
reflected this royal love of show and this passionate joy of living. 
Youthful enthusiasm and delight in action characterized all 
classes: the allurement and the mystery of the unknown led the 
bolder spirits to seek adventure beyond the seas; but even those 
who stayed at home had imperial imaginations; and all in truth 
showed in word and deed that almost riotous enjoyment of life 
which healthy children and youthful nations feel. If we look 




THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



89 



around for some typical Elizabethan, we shall find that no one 
man more completely incarnated the vigor, the curiosity, the 
daring, the courtesy, and the moral heroism of this remarkable 
age than the versatile and knightly Sir Walter Raleigh. 



i 




LONDON BRIDGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 
On the tower gateway in the foreground may be seen the heads of criminals. 

Elizabethan London. — In London all this streaming tide of life 
reached its highest point. Londor was still a walled city except 
on the water side along the Thames, and within these walls some- 
what over a hundred thousand people lived. Without the walls 
were pleasant suburbs containing another hundred thousand; and 
of these suburbs the most important was Westminster, because 



90 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



it was the seat of Parliament, while near by was Whitehall, the 
favorite London residence of the queen. Along the Strand from 
the city to Westminster were the stately mansions of the nobility. 
The great highway of London was the Thames, clear and shining 
then, crowded with boats going east and west or crossing to 
Southwark, where the theaters and bear gardens were. Pleasant 
open fields stretched along the banks only a few minutes' walk 
from the city, and hither came those on recreation bent. The 
Thames was spanned by London Bridge, a massive structure on 
which were shops, and from the ends and middle of which rose 
gloomy towers grimly decorated with the ghastly heads of criminals. 
Within the city proper the streets were narrow and generally 
dirty, badly paved and poorly lighted, and lined with rows of 
houses with projecting gables. In these streets moved back and 
forth a motley and noisy throng: the noble in his velvet, the beggar 
in his rags, the gaily dressed foreigner, the soberly clad Puritan, 
the sleek and prosperous tradesman, the fashionable gallant with 
his laced satin doublet and French hat, the street vendor selling 
his wares, the ragged impecunious poet and the hungry play- 
wright — all these and more jostled each other in the crowded 
streets. 

The central meeting place of London was the spacious nave of 
St. Paul's Cathedral. Here lawyers and business men strolled 
and gossiped; here you might hire servants or meet your friends or 
observe the newest fashions; here you might learn all the latest 
news from the ordinary scandals to important political appoint- 
ments. St. Paul's was, in short, the great loafing place of the 
city, the common social and business exchange. The tavern was 
another social center, the club of that day. Men often dined at 
the taverns, remaining long over their wine, smoking or playing 
cards, discussing the newest book or play, and later going to the 
theater. The most famous of these taverns was the Mermaid in 
Bread Street, not far from St. Paul's, where Shakespeare, Ben 
Jonson, and other great Elizabethans used to have many wit- 
combats. Of these merry meetings Beaumont the dramatist 
wrote the well-known lines: 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



91 



What things have we seen 
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been 
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, 
As if everyone from whence they came 
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
Of his dull life! 

The other great resort of London life, the theater, will be discussed 
a little later under the Drama. 

Thus it will be seen that Elizabethan London, the heart of all 
that ceaseless activity and national enthusiasm, presented a fasci- 
nating spectacle of color and movement in endless variety. Into 
it poured a stream of foreign travel bringing England into familiar 
contact with the continent; to it returned sailors and travelers 
from the new world and the old with news of strange peoples, 
enchanted lands and rivers with sands of gold. For the poet and 
especially for the dramatist there could not have been a more 
stimulating environment. After this preliminary sketch of the 
conditions under which Elizabethan literature flourished, we may 
the more appreciatively study the lives and writings of the master 
spirits of that golden age. 

I. ELIZABETHAN POETRY (NON-DRAMATIC) 

Elizabethan literature falls naturally into three general divisions: 
(1) Non-dramatic Poetry, including the. works of Spenser, of Sid- 
ney and the Sonneteers, and the Miscellaneous Lyrics; (2) Dra- 
matic Literature, the principal form of poetic utterance in this 
period; and (3) Prose, of which there is considerable variety. 
While the drama is the main interest in this vital and active age, 
non-dramatic poetry occupies a prominent place, reflecting as it 
does the quieter romantic spirit and voicing the minor emotions. 
The earliest of the great Elizabethan poets is Edmund Spenser, 
with the publication of whose Shepherd's Calendar in 1579 Eliza- 
bethan literature may be said to begin. 

EDMUND SPENSER (1552-1599) 

His Life. — Not very far from the Tower of London Edmund Spenser was 
bom in 1552. His father, though a clothmaker in London, came of a gentle 



92 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



family in Lancashire. Spenser attended the Merchant Tailors' School, 
one of the famous grammar schools of London, where he received pecuniary- 
aid. From this school he went to Cambridge, entering Pembroke College 
as a sizar, — that is, a student receiving financial aid and usually subject 
to certain menial duties. Spenser made an excellent record at Cambridge: 
he diligently studied the Latin and Greek classics as well as French and 
Italian, and he must have read the few available English books, especially 
Chaucer. He formed at least two valuable friendships, one with Edmund 
Kirk who later wrote an introduction to the Shepherd's Calendar, and the 
other with Gabriel Harvey, the literary critic, who a few years later intro- 
duced him to the Earl of Leicester. Of the details of Spenser's life at Cam- 
bridge, or indeed of his early life in general, we know very little. He left 
the University in 1576 after taking his M. A. The next two years he spent 
in the north of England, probably in Lancashire with relatives, during which 
time he wooed in vain a maiden whom he romantically names "Rosalind." 

By 1578 Spenser is in London, having made the acquaintance of Sidney 
and other prominent courtiers, among them the Earl of Leicester. Soon 
after this Spenser is honored with an audience by the queen, and for the next 
year or two lives in the sunshine of the court, as far as his limited means will 
allow. In 1579 he published the Shepherd's Calendar, modestly signed 
"Immerito" and dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, a work which was at once 
recognized as of a new order. In 1580 Spenser was appointed secretary to 
Lord Grey, the new Lord Deputy of Ireland, at the solicitation of Leicester 
and other courtier friends; and in that turbulent country the poet, holding 
various official positions, lived for the next eighteen years almost the life 
of an exile. Most of this time was spent at Kilcolman Castle in the county 
of Cork which, together with a large tract of land, had been given him as a 
reward for his services. Ireland was in a more or less disturbed condition, 
and it is certain that the poet's life there was not altogether one of "dreamful 
ease." Still, he found leisurefor writing his great work, TheFaerie Queene, 
the first three books of which he took to London in 1589 and three more in 
1595, encouraged by his generous friend Walter Raleigh, who had visited 
him in his lonely Irish castle. The publication of TheFaerie Queene made 
him famous but gained for him only a small pension from the unappreciative 
Burleigh, though the queen would fain have made it more. In 1594 Spenser 
married Elizabeth Boyle. Four years later an insurrection broke out 
near the poet's estate, Kilcolman Castle was pillaged and burned, and Spen- 
ser with his family barely escaped to England broken in health and hope and 
almost penniless. The great poet lived only a few months after his return to 
London, dying in January, 1599. He was buried near Chaucer in West- 
minster Abbey. 

His Personality. — Spenser is less real to us than Chaucer. The 
two men were essentially different not only in personality but also 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



93 



in the choice and treatment of their subjects. Spenser was a 
"sage and serious poet," as Milton said; he lacked humor, that 
pervasive human quality which makes Chaucer so real through 
the centuries. Spenser held public office as did Chaucer, but he 
was not interested in the men and life about him as was the older 
poet whom he called master. While not without practical sagacity, 
Spenser was not a man of affairs: he was rather the weaver of the 
tapestry of dreams out of antique materials; he was always the 
poet. He was descended from gentle blood and his tempera- 
ment was aristocratic; while Chaucer, though in the royal service 
and using legends of court and castle in much of his poetry, was 
democratic at heart and wrote with his eye on life. Furthermore, 
Chaucer had ardent disciples who, besides, complimenting their 
master by literary imitation, paid him strong personal tribute in 
certain lines now famous. No immediate disciples continued 
Spenser's work, though to all later poets his verse became the 
fountain of ineffable beauty. His remoteness from the whirling 
center of Elizabethan life is no doubt another reason why we 
know so little of the man himself. Spenser had warm friends at 
court — such men as Sidney and Leicester and Raleigh — but he 
had neither the wealth nor the talent for affairs to become him- 
self a successful courtier. He had indeed sued for court favor 
until he was weary and heartsick, only to be sent back to his 
provincial retreat among a people he did not like, to dream his 
mystic dreams and spin his silken web of allegory. Perhaps it 
was just as well: in London it was the day of the dramatic poet, 
and Spenser did not have the dramatic temperament, was not a 
lover of action or a keen observer of men; dwelling apart in Celtic 
Ireland he could best create his shining world of enchantment 
called The Fairie Queene. 

His Works. — The supreme work of Spenser is The Faerie Queene, 
an allegorical poem in six books with the fragment of a seventh. 
The original plan of the poem contemplated twenty-four books, 
twelve devoted to the twelve private virtues and twelve to an 
equal number of public or political virtues. While this was the 
vast design of the author, a splendid dream which he could hardly 



94 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



hope to realize, he did actually set himself the task of writing 
twelve books. These twelve books were to set forth the twelve 
qualities or virtues of ideal knighthood, each virtue being repre- 
sented by a knight who should wage war against certain vices. 
In the end, when the knights had gained the victory by the help 
of that pattern of perfect knighthood, Prince Arthur, the marriage 
of Arthur with Gloriana, the Fairie Queene, was to be cele- 
brated. 

As a matter of fact, however, only six books, each containing 
twelve cantos, were completed. In the first book are related the 
adventures of the Red Cross Knight, representing Holiness; in 
the second those of Sir Guyon, or Temperance; in the third those 
of Britomarte, or Chastity; in the fourth those of Cambel and 
Triamond, or Friendship; in the fifth, those of Sir Artegall, or 
Justice; and in the sixth those of Sir Calidore, or Courtesy. 
These knights, we are told in Spenser's introductory letter to 
the poem, are sent forth on their several quests by Gloriana, 
Queen of Fairyland, who is holding a festival lasting twelve days. 
Each day some one comes to the court telling of beauty or virtue 
in distress and pleading for a champion to go to the relief of the 
oppressed. In response to these requests the knights set out to 
fight with dragons, witches, giants, and other powers of evil. 
The poem gives in detail the story of these adventures, sometimes 
clearly, sometimes obscurely, so interrupted here and there by 
episodes and complicated by political and religious allegory veil- 
ing historical characters, that one may easily get confused and 
lose the thread of the narrative. Throughout the adventures 
Prince Arthur now and again appears in his search for the Faerie 
Queene. It is all a bewildering wonderland of gorgeous dreams 
in mellifluous verse. 

The professed purpose of The Faerie Queene is moral in the larger 
sense of shadowing forth the eternal conflict between sense and 
soul, good and evil, right and wrong; more directly, it is to "fashion 
a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline," 
as Spenser explains in his introductory letter to Sir Walter Raleigh. 
The poem is on the one hand a great moral allegory depicting the 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



95 



varied struggles between preeminent Virtues, impersonated after 
the mediaeval fashion by valorous knights, and deadly Vices in 
the guise of dwarfs, magicians, enchantresses, and giants; and 
on the other, a social and political allegory reflecting actual per- 
sons and contemporary events. Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, 
stands for Queen Elizabeth; the false Duessa is Mary, Queen of 
Scots, Elizabeth's rival; Prince Arthur is Lord Leicester; other 
characters represent Sir Philip Sidney, Lord Grey of Wilton, Sir 
Walter Raleigh, and many more. Moreover, the conflict between 
England and Spain, Protestantism and Catholicism, and in general 
the growing majesty of the nation at home and abroad are sym- 
bolized in this leisurely pageant. "In that Faery Queene," says 
Spenser, "I meane glory in my generall intention, but in my 
particular I conceive the most excellent and glorious person 
of our soveraine the Queene, and her kingdome in Faery 
land." 

The first three books of The Faerie Queene are the best, and for 
most readers the first book will suffice to give a good idea of the 
nature of the poem and its exquisite music. After the first three 
books the interest is likely to lag in the confused labyrinth of 
allegory. Indeed, it is best not to attempt to unravel the tangled 
web of subtle allusion, but to read on forgetful of all but the 
magic of the poetry itself. 

The Spenserian Stanza. — The Faerie Queene is written in a new 
kind of verse form which came to be known as the "Spenserian 
stanza." Spenser changed the ottava rima (eight-line rhyme) of the 
Italian poet Ariosto into a nine-line stanza, the first eight lines 
having five feet each and the ninth line six feet — and the whole 
rhyming ababbcbcc. The last line, called an Alexandrine, gives a 
peculiarly lingering, musical effect to the stanza. The Spenserian 
stanza proved very popular with succeeding poets: during the 
nineteenth century Keats, Shelley, Byron, and Tennyson used 
it with happy effect. The following stanzas taken at random from 
the first book of The Faerie Queene will serve to illustrate the 
form of Spenser's verse as well as the languorous rhythm of his 
lines : 



96 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



A little lowly Hermitage it was, 

Down in a dale, hard by a forest's side, 

Far from resort of people, that did pas 

In travell to and froe: a little wyde 1 

There was an holy chappell edifyde, 2 

Wherein the Hermite dewly wont to say 

His holy things each morne and eventyde: 

Thereby a Christall streame did gently play, 

Which from a sacred fountaine welled forth alway. 

The drouping Night thus creepeth on them fast, 

And the sad humour 3 loading their eye liddes, 

As messenger of Morpheus on them cast 

Sweet slombring deaw, the which to sleepe them biddes. 

Unto their lodgings then his guestes he riddes: 4 

Where when all drowned in deadly sleepe he findes, 

He to his study goes, and there amiddes 

His Magick bookes and artes of sundry kindes, 

He seekes out mighty charmes, to trouble sleepy mindes. 

The Minor Poems: Shepherd's Calendar, Sonnets, Marriage- 
Hymns. — When in 1579 the Shepherd's Calendar appeared, it 
was evident that England had at last another original poet; and 
yet in this work Spenser was experimenting feeling his way towards 
a more adequate method and a worthier theme. The poem is a 
series of twelve eclogues or pastorals, one for each month in the 
year. Tb<3 characters are shepherds and shepherdesses who dis- 
course on love and rural life after the artificial fashion in Renais- 
sance imitations of ancient pastoral poetry. Spenser varies the 
conventional order, however, by introducing a satire on the clergy, 
a lament on his own hopeless wooing of "Rosalind," an allegory, 
and a tribute to Queen Elizabeth. Moreover, he uses various 
meters and sprinkles the verse pretty liberally with archaic 
words in order to give the conversations a rustic flavor. The 
publication of the Shepherd's Calendar is a significant incident in 
English literature: in the first place it marks the beginning of 
the great outburst of Elizabethan poetry; and in the second place, 
it brought into our literature the pastoral form which the Eliza- 
bethans were soon to use so extensively in the drama. 



1 distant. 2 built. 3 moisture. * dismisses. 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



97 



Among the other minor poems the most noteworthy are the 
Amoretti, a -series of sonnets, and two marriage-hymns, the 
"Prothalamiurn" and the "Epithalamium." The Amoretti, or 
love sonnets, celebrate Spenser's courtship of Elizabeth Boyle; 
the "Prothalamiurn" is in honor of the approaching double 
wedding of the Ladies Elizabeth and Catherine Somerset, while 
the "Epithalamium" celebrates Spenser's own marriage. These 
two wedding-hymns are among the noblest poems in all litera- 
ture; the "Epithalamium" in particular is a burst of glorious 
music from the poet's heart. Besides these lyrics of love and 
marriage, Spenser wrote a satire on society in general called 
"Mother Hubbard's Tale," another pastoral, "Colin Clout's Come 
Home Again," and several hymns to love and beauty after the 
manner of Petrarch. In several of these minor poems there is a 
melancholy strain which reveals the weariness and disillusion of 
the poet, who had put his trust in princes only to be rewarded 
with indifference or positive neglect. 

Spenser's Contribution. — Spenser wrote under the spell of the 
Italian Renaissance. Out of the shining materials of mediaeval 
chivalry he made the framework of his great allegory, but the 
inner beauty and moral elevation of it adequately reflect the 
spirit of the Renaissance and Reformation. Spenser is above all 
else the poet of pure Beauty. In his magic mirror we may per- 
ceive the vague outlines of real persons and events, but Spenser 
did not write with his eyes on reality. Like the Lady of Shalott 
he weaves "a magic web with colors gay," and in his mirror as in 
hers "shadows of the world appear." Beauty and Melody and 
Imaginative Splendor — these are the three chief qualities of 
Spenser's poetry. The melody of his verse is due in part to the 
frequent use of obsolete words with full vowel and liquid sounds, 
such as eyne (eyes), eftsoones (forthwith) fone (foes), whylome 
(formerly), yborne (born). His Faerie Queene, like Prospero's 
enchanted island, is "full of sounds and sweet airs that give 
delight and hurt not." 

These qualities, together with the stanza form of his invention, 
have so strongly appealed to later poets that Spenser is called 



98 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



"the poets' poet." Indeed, to all sensitive lovers of ethereal 
beauty and to those who delight in allegories and symbols, Spen- 
ser's poetry is a land of enchantment. Yet to the modern reader 
allegory of itself makes little appeal; and while the essential 
charm of Spenser's poetry does not lie in the allegory, there are 
not many persons who have either the sense for delicate beauty or 
the patience to read the six books of The Faerie Queene, so unreal 
does the world of Spenser seem. Unrelieved either by humor or 
dramatic action, it is in strange contrast with the productions 
of the buoyant, red-blooded playwrights who were soon to make 
the Elizabethan welkin ring. But in this serene and mystic 
masterpiece of Spenser all should read, much or little, as their 
temperaments incline them, and so help to keep alive in their 
own souls the ideal of perfect Beauty. 

THE LESSER POETS 

Sidney and the Sonneteers. — The life of Sir Philip Sidney is 
more interesting than anything he wrote, for no other Elizabethan 
courtier, not even Raleigh, is so perfect an embodiment of the 
national and personal ideals of the time. Sidney's high social 
position, his charming personality, and above all his heroic death 
on the field of Zutphen, fighting for his country, have invested 
his name with romantic interest. Of noble family, nephew to 
Elizabeth's favorite, the Earl of Leicester, he was educated at 
Oxford, traveled in France, Italy, Germany, and Austria, was 
later sent on diplomatic missions to the continent, lived at court 
and cultivated literature, was friend of Spenser, married Frances 
Walsingham, wrote poetry and romance, and died at thirty-two 
on the battlefield. This is a summary of Sidney's brief career. 
His writings were not published until after his death, though they 
were freely circulated before that in manuscript among his friends, 
according to the custom of the day. 

Sidney's literary fame rests upon three works: Arcadia, a 
pastoral prose romance set in a landscape of idyllic charm where 
courtiers, in the guise of shepherds and shepherdesses, talk in 
stilted language abounding in poetic "conceits"; Defence of Poesie t 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



99 



a critical prose essay defending English poetry and even expressing 
admiration for native ballads such as "Chevy Chace," which, he 
declares, always moved his heart "more than a trumpet"; and 
Astrophel and Stella, a series of sonnets addressed to the Lady 
Penelope Devereux. While in his own generation the Arcadia 
was the most popular of these, and along with Lyly's Euphues 
made fashionable an artificial sort of prose known later as "Eu- 
phuistic," the Astrophel and Stella is Sidney's most abiding con- 
tribution. In memory of his early love for Penelope Devereux, 
whom fate had given to another, he obeyed the command of his 
Muse, "Look in thy heart and write. " Astrophel (star-lover) is 
Sidney and Stella (star) is Penelope, daughter of the Earl of 
Essex, Lady Rich. Astrophel and Stella, though as a whole more 
or less imitative of French and Italian sonnets, contains some 
exquisite poems which are no doubt personal in sentiment. Sidney 
is, indeed, the first to give distinction to the sonnet in our litera- 
ture. 

Contemporary with Sidney and immediately following him, there 
began and flourished a mighty vogue of sonnet writing. Thousands 
of sonnets were written in the two decades from 1580 to 1600, usu- 
ally arranged in series and addressed to some real or imaginary mis- 
tress, as were the Italian Petrarch's to Laura. Thus, we have sonnet 
books by Daniel, Constable, Lodge, Barnes, Drayton, and other 
poetasters, addressed to Delia, Diana, Phillis, Idea, Coelia, 
Chloris, Diella, Fidessa, Zepheria, and other imaginary mistresses. 
Perhaps the vast majority of these sonnets are purely imitative 
and conventional; occasionally, however, we find sonnets which 
evidently reflect genuine personal emotion. It must not be for- 
gotten, though, that at this time sonneteering was a fashion, 
almost a rage, and that all poets, lesser and greater, tried their 
hands at the popular form. Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare 
stand out to-day as the most accomplished and the most genuine 
of the makers of the Elizabethan sonnet. 1 

1 The Elizabethans usually broke up the Petrarchan sonnet of octave 
and sextet (eight and six-line divisions) into three quatrains and a rhyming 
couplet, of which the Shakespearean sonnet is the best representative: 
ababcdcdefefgg. 



100 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Sackville and Gascoigne. — Among the earlier Elizabethan poets 
Thomas Sackville (1536-1608) and George Gascoigne deserve 
mention because of their influence in a period of transition. 
Sackville conceived the plan of a great poem after the order of 
Lydgate's Fall of Princes, called The Mirror for Magistrates, to 
which various authors were to contribute and into which contem- 
porary rulers might look and take warning from old examples. 
Sackville completed the "Induction," or general preface, to the 
work and the "Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham/' 
wherein the ghost of the Duke recounts the story of his fall. 
About this time Sackville went into politics and the Mirror for 
Magistrates received no further contributions from him. What he 
did write is fresh and vigorous, giving promise of still more notable 
achievement. Later, Sackville in collaboration with Norton 
wrote Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, the first English tragedy, 
which will be discussed under the Drama. George Gascoigne, 
a clever and versatile genius, wrote The Steel Glass, the first verse 
satire in our literature. This work bears some resemblance to 
More's Utopia in that it contrasts conditions in an ideal state 
with the vices and follies of the time. Gascoigne also wrote the 
first English prose comedy, The Supposes, an adaptation of a 
play of Ariosto. 

Drayton and Chapman. — Two later Elizabethan poets are 
Michael Drayton and George Chapman: indeed, so laborious 
and learned is much of their verse that they may be classed 
with writers of the succeeding age. Drayton (1563-1631) wrote 
Polyolbion, a lengthy metrical account of the geography of 
Britain — the mountains, rivers, lakes, cities, and the local legends, 
a work of greater antiquarian than poetic interest. His "Battle 
of Agincourt" is a spirited patriotic ballad with a fine swing, the 
meter of which Tennyson adopted in his "Charge of the Light 
Brigade." Chapman translated Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into 
a long swinging measure which is more pleasing to the ear than 
the later and better known translation of Pope. This is the 
first of many famous attempts to render into English verse 



TRi£ ELIZABETHAN AGE 



101 



the greatest of ancient epics. Chapman completed Hero and 
Leander, the unfinished poem of Marlowe; but he wrote, be- 
sides, a number of plays, and so belongs among the dramatic 
poets. 

Miscellaneous Lyrics. — Numerous collections of lyric poems by 
various authors appeared in England during the latter half of 
the sixteenth century. Sometimes an enterprising bookseller 
would publish a collection of songs already popular but scattered 
through plays or other long works; sometimes a literary editor 
would undertake to bring these occasional lyrics together in one 
volume. Such a volume was called a "Miscellany." The first 
of these collections was of course TotteVs Miscellany, already 
considered; others followed in rapid succession, such as The Para- 
dise of Dainty Devices, A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, 
A Handful of Pleasant Delites, and England's Helicon, Of these 
England's Helicon is the richest compendium of Elizabethan 
pastorals and love poems, containing verses from Spenser, Sidney, 
Watson, Greene, Lodge, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and others. 
These collections were enormously popular, for they brought 
within reach of every lover of song the most exquisite lyric utter- 
ances of the best poets of the day. 

No other age has been enlivened and thrilled with such a burst 
of melody; enriched by such extensive cycles of fugitive lyrics, 
England became in truth "a nest of singing birds." Many of 
these songs are found imbedded in plays, intended as a relief 
to the dramatic dialogue, for they were set to music and actually 
sung. There is an almost infinite variety of mood and theme, 
from lullabies and serenades to the greater magic of Marlowe's 
"Come live with me and be my love," and Ben Jonson's "Drink 
to me only with thine eyes," and Shakespeare's "Hark, hark! the 
lark," "Under the greenwood tree," and "Full fathom five thy 
father lies." One of the sweetest minor singers of those tuneful 
days is Thomas Campion, whose name has all but perished from 
the memory. His loveliest lyric, " Cherry-Ripe, " reveals the 
light gracefulness of the Elizabethan song: 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



There is a garden in her face 

Where roses and white lilies grow; 
A heavenly paradise is that place, 

Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow; 
There cherries grow that none may buy, 
Till "Cherry-Ripe" themselves do cry. 

Those cherries fairly do enclose 

Of orient pearl a double row, 
Which when her lovely laughter shows, 

They look like rose-buds fill'd with snow: 
Yet them no peer nor prince may buy, 
Till "Cherry-Ripe" themselves do cry. 

Her eyes like angels watch them still; 

Her brows like bended bows do stand, 
Threat'ning with piercing frowns to kill 

All that attempt with eye or hand 
Those sacred cherries to come nigh, 
Till "Cherry-Ripe" themselves do cry! 

II. THE DRAMA 

THE PRE-ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 

The Religious Beginnings. — The Elizabethan Drama was not 
simply an outburst of artistic energy in an age of boundless activity; 
it was at the same time the outgrowth of centuries of popular 
interest in plays and spectacles of one sort and another. The 
Normans were fond of shows and splendid pageantry, secular 
and religious, and they early stimulated in the people a desire 
for dramatic spectacle. It was in the Church, however, that this 
love of dramatic ceremonial found its most effective expression. 
The priests perceiving the need of a more concrete and pictorial 
form of religious instruction for the ignorant masses, arranged 
in the chancel on certain important festivals of the Church a 
scenic representation of the sacred event celebrated. On Good 
Friday, for instance, a crucifix would be buried in some improvised 
tomb, and on Easter morning, after the image had been secretly 
removed, celebration would be held around the empty tomb. 
Such scenes as this would in the course of time be made more 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



103 



realistic by the addition of elaborate music and extended dia- 
logue. The angels and the women at the sepulcher, the responsive 
chanting, the procession of priests in their showy vestments, the 
decorated church, and the motley crowd looking on in breathless 
interest — all this was decidedly dramatic. The simple dialogue, 
at first sung responsively and later on spoken by the priests, was 
this: 

1 Quem quaeritis in sepulchro, o Christicolae? 
Jesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o caelicolae. 
Non est hie, surrexit sicut praedixerat. 
Ite, nuntiate quia surrexit de sepulchro! 

This dialogue between the angels and the women at the sepulcher 
became a part of the liturgy, or services of the Church, and was 
later enlarged into what might be called a one-act play in cele- 
bration of Easter. Gradually other ceremonies developed in 
connection with the Easter and Christmas celebrations, out of 
which grew little sacred plays. By the middle of the thirteenth 
century this liturgical or church drama was fully developed. 
During the next hundred years English was gradually substi- 
tuted for Latin, as the play lost its strictly ecclesiastical character; 
the performance passed from the church to the churchyard, and 
then to the market place or public square. By this time the plays 
had so developed as to cover a wide range of Biblical subjects. 

Miracle Plays. — In England these dramatized Bible stories were 
called "miracle plays"; in France dramatized saints' legends were 
known as "miracle plays," while those based on Bible incidents 
were called "mystery plays." This distinction, however, was not 
recognised in England, the term "miracle play" including all 
kinds of religious drama. The first miracle play in England of 
which we have any account was given at the monastery school 
at Dunstable in honor of St. Catherine (Ludus de Sanda Katha- 
rina) about 1110. The growing popularity of the miracle plays 
and the more elaborate staging necessary for the interpretation 

l Whom seek ye in the sepulcher, O Christians ? 
Jesus of Nazareth -who was crucified, O Heavenly ones. 
He is not here; be is risen as he foretold. 
Go and make known that he has risen from the sepulcher. 



104 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



of newer themes caused the drama to pass from the control of 
the Church to that of guilds, or trades-unions. Isolated plays 
were joined together into a dramatic cycle setting forth striking 
incidents in Biblical history from the creation to the judgment 
day. Each guild undertook to equip and present one play, 
meeting all expenses and providing the actors, who were now of 
course from the laity. There was often peculiar fitness in the 




A MIRACLE PLAY AT COVENTRY 
From an old print 



assignment of plays among the guilds : Noah's Flood was presented 
by the guild of water merchants, the Building of the Ark by the 
shipwrights, Abraham and Isaac by the butchers' guild, and the 
Adoration of the Wise Men by the goldsmiths. 

The proper presentation of a cycle of plays would require an 
entire day or even several days. The favorite time was during 
the great church festival of Corpus Christi in early summer when 
weather conditions were likely to be favorable. The plays were 
usually acted on floats, or "pageants" as they were called, drawn 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



105 



from one show-place to another by apprentices of the various 
guilds, though sometimes a fixed platform in a central place was 
used instead of a movable stage. A huge box mounted on four 
wheels was divided into two compartments, the upper story 
being the stage and the lower the dressing room. Early in the 
morning of the day of presentation a procession of these pageants, 
or play cars, entered the town preceded by heralds announcing 
them. The first car stops at a given station before a motley 
mediaeval crowd, some standing, others seated on a temporary 
scaffolding; the curtains at the sides and front of the box are 
drawn and the play begins. When the performance is over the 
pageant moves on to the next station; others follow, and so on 
until the whole cycle has passed. 

Among the conventional stage properties were the following: 
a throne, a pavilion representing heaven, trapdoors, and an 
immense dragon-mouth, representing hell, belching forth flame 
and smoke into which the Devil— a character with hairy body, 
hideous masked face, fiery red beard, horns and forked tail — 
pitched lost souls dressed in yellow and black typifying the flames 
and darkness of the infernal regions. The costumes were some- 
times costly and elaborate, but for the most part were those of the 
time, for early actors were not troubled by anachronisms whether 
in story or costume. Humorous elements are to be found even 
in the earlier miracle plays, while in the later the comic element 
is conspicuous, sometimes degenerating into broad farce. In 
The Deluge Noah's shrewish wife flatly declines to go into the 
Ark and has to be put in by main force; the sheep-stealing episode 
in the Second Shepherd's Play is excellent comedy; Herod, a 
favorite character in the plays along with the Devil, was much 
given to violent raging on the stage and among the crowd, whence 
Hamlet's allusion about "out-Heroding Herod." Now and then 
there is a note of genuine pathos, as, for example, in the play of 
Abraham and Isaac when the little boy pleads for his life. This 
and several other plays possess real literary merit. 

Four great cycles of miracle plays have come down to us, con- 
taining in all about one hundred and forty plays : the York Cycle, 



106 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



the Chester Cycle, the Coventry Cycle, and the Towneley Cycle — 
the first three named for the towns where they were played and 
the last for the family that owned the collection. Of these the 
York Cycle of forty-eight plays is the largest. Many plays are 
lost. The wide popularity of the miracle plays is proved by the 
fact that they were given in as many as one hundred and twenty 
English towns and villages. They were most popular during the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; from 1550 performances were 
infrequent, and by the close of Elizabeth's reign (1603) they had 
ceased. The famous Passion Play of Oberammergau, in Bavaria, 
still reminds us of the widespread interest in religious plays five 
or six hundred years ago. 

Morality Plays. — Along with the miracle plays there grew into 
popular favor an allegorical species of drama called the Morality. 
The purpose of the Miracle Play, as we have seen, was concrete 
religious instruction in Bible story through the presentation in 
a realistic way of scenes and characters from the Scriptures. 
The method was simple and direct, concerning itself merely with 
the subject matter; there was no attempt to enforce a lesson. 
The purpose of the Morality Play, on the other hand, was ethical 
instruction; it undertook to supplement the Miracle Play by 
applying religious teaching to the conduct of life. The Miracle 
Play sought to eonfirm faith, while the Morality Play sought to 
strengthen virtue. In order to do this, the Morality Play repre- 
sented the conflict between good and evil in the soul of man by 
means of personified abstractions, such as the World, the Flesh, 
Mercy, Justice, Covetousness, Hypocrisy, Pity, Beauty, Knowl- 
edge. The early moralities dealt in a general way with the whole 
scope of human life and its interests. The most striking of these 
is Everyman, which has of late years been presented with telling 
effect. "Everyman" stands for the typical human being on his 
long journey towards Death. On the road he is deserted by 
Kindred and Wealth, and finally by Beauty, Strength, and Five 
Senses; but at the end Good Deeds, long neglected and almost 
forgotten, is revived through Knowledge and accompanies Every- 
man to the grave. 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



107 



Morality plays became more and more concrete, finally intro- 
ducing historical characters thinly veiled and dealing with matters 
of contemporary interest in Church and State. Thus the later 
morality grew into a social and political satire and out of that 
into a form of chronicle play, like Bale's King Johan t which is a 
prototype of the later historical plays, such as Shakespeare's 
King John and the rest. The morality is not to be thought of as 
the successor of the miracle play, but rather as representing another 
phase of dramatic development. Among the characters in the 
later moralities an important one was the Vice. Dressed as a 
court fool, or jester, and carrying a wooden sword the Vice amused 
the crowd by beating and otherwise worrying the Devil, only to 
be carried off at last on the Devil's back howling into hell-mouth. 
The Vice survives in the fool of Shakespeare's plays. 

Interludes. — The comic relief episode of the miracle and morality 
plays developed at last into an independent form, the Interlude, 
a short performance in demand at social entertainments and at 
banquets. The purpose of the interlude was simply to amuse. 
The name is usually explained as a play (ludus) between (inter) 
courses at a banquet, but recent scholarship inclines to make it 
mean a play, or dialogue, between two persons. However that 
may be, the interlude was an exceedingly popular diversion at 
entertainments because of its realistic and farcical nature. It was 
an amusing skit, a little farce, a miniature comedy; indeed, we 
find in the interlude the conditions out of which regular comedy 
soon developed. The most famous interludes are those of JOHN 
HEY WOOD (1497-1577), a musician, poet and wit of the court of 
Henry VIII and of Mary. Heywood's best interlude is the Four 
P's. A Pardoner, a Palmer, a Pedlar, and a 'Poticary engage in 
a wit contest, each trying to outdo the other in boasting of the 
merits of his own vocation. In the end it is a contest as to 
which can tell the greatest lie; the prize is awarded to the Palmer 
who declares that in all his travels he never saw a woman out of 
patience. Heywood's interludes are social satires, but so great 
is their human quality, their low-comedy humor, that in reading 



108 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



them one is often reminded of Chaucer. They represent a dis- 
tinct advance towards genuine Elizabethan Comedy. 

Folk Plays. — Closely akin to the interlude, which dealt with 
the near and familiar, was the strictly native drama connected 
with Christmas, May Day and other holiday festivals. Among 
these popular amusements were the "Robin Hood Plays" cele- 
brating the merry adventures in Sherwood Forest of Robin Hood, 
Friar Tuck, and Maid Marian. These were of course the Robin 
Hood ballads put into dramatic form with such variations as 
the occasion demanded. Equally popular were the "St. George 
Plays," in honor of England's patron saint, presented at Christmas 
and known as "mummings," — that is, plays in which masked 
revellers (mummers) took part. The stock characters in the 
mummings were Old Father Christmas, St. George, the Dragon, 
Old King Cole, the Merry Andrew, and the Morris Men. The 
Morris Dance was a favorite among the country folk and along 
with mummings is still kept up in remoter parts of the British 
Isles. 1 All these native secular elements tended to make the 
drama more truly an expression of the national spirit. In the 
first quarter of the sixteenth century the term "Masque" began 
to be applied to elaborate court shows, becoming later an important 
spectacular element in the Elizabethan Drama. About the middle 
of this century the classical influence helped to fix definitely the 
dramatic form. 

The Classical Influence. — The native drama in its develop- 
ment from the miracle and the morality plays on through the 
interludes was lacking in definiteness of structure. There was 
vitality without artistic restraint. The widespread interest in 
the Latin and Greek classics following the Renaissance proved 
just at this stage exceedingly helpful to the English drama. 
During the first half of the sixteenth century it became the 
fashion at the great public schools of England, such as St. Paul's, 
Westminster, and Eton, as well as at the universities, to present 



1 For an exceedingly interesting account of these old folk-plays the stu- 
dent is referred to Thomas Hardy's novel, The Return of the Native. 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



109 



in Latin the comedies of Plautus and Terence and the tragedies 
of Seneca, with the students as actors. Indeed, even in the gram- 
mar schools the boys acted these plays either in Latin or in trans- 
lations. A little later the classic dramatists through translations 
became public property, Plautus being the favorite in comedy 
and Seneca in tragedy. Moreover, the Roman dramatists were 
popular in court circles and this, by reinforcing the academic 
liking for classic plays, helped to set the standard. Not only 
were comedy and tragedy proper affected by the Latin drama, 
but likewise the chronicle or history play, an early example of 
which just emerging from the morality, Bale's King John, has 
already been mentioned. Certain long rhetorical speeches in the 
historical plays of Shakespeare, for instance, show the lingering 
influences of Seneca. 

The Latin plays were divided into acts and scenes; they ob- 
served more or less closely the three unities of time, place, and 
subject, according to which the action should be confined to a 
single day, a single place, and one central theme; they were com- 
pact in structure and limited in scope. The English drama, how- 
ever, sought to reflect not simply one section of life in a play but 
the whole, and accordingly it did not at its best observe the 
unities. In the classic drama, furthermore, a sharp distinction 
is made between comedy and tragedy, whereas in the English, 
laughter and tears alternate in a single play as they do in real 
life. What the Elizabethans did gain from the imitation and 
translation of classic plays was a sense for form and dramatic 
technique which they could have acquired nowhere else; and 
henceforth the classical five-act division with clearly .marked 
scenic subdivisions was to prevail in the English drama. 

First Regular Comedy and Tragedy. — The first regular comedy 
in English is Ralph Roister Doister, by NICHOLAS UDALL, head- 
master of Westminster, about 1 553 . This play is a clever adap tation 
of a comedy of Plautus and was written for acting by school- 
boys. It is divided into acts and scenes and is in verse; the move- 
ment is rapid and the plot well constructed, though too artificial 
to be true to English life. About 1562 appeared another comedy, 



110 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Gammer Gurton's Needle, by WILLIAM STEVENSON, which, while 
loosely following Latin models, is a genuine piece of domestic 
realism, reflecting with graphic and coarse humor the very spirit 
of rustic English life. Gammer Gurton is patching her man 
Hodge's leather breeches when the cat jumps into the milk pan. 
The old woman leaves her sewing to run after the cat. Mean- 
while her needle is lost; in distress she calls in the neighbors to 
help find it; the plot thickens; the whole village is turned upside 
down; there is crimination and recrimination; fights follow, and 
all parties are dragged before the justice. Just then Hodge dis- 
covers the needle sticking in his leather breeches, and the play 
ends in boisterous merriment. A stanza or two from a drinking 
song in the play will give some idea of its English atmosphere, 
for Gammer Gurton 9 s Needle is really an interlude in classic form: 

I cannot eate but lytle meate, 

My stomacke is not good; 

But sure I thinke that I can drinke 

With him that weares a hood. 

Thoughe I go bare, take ye no care, 

I am nothinge a colde; 

I stuffe my skin so full within 

Of jolly good ale and old. 

I love no rost but a nut browne toste 1 

And a crab layde in the fyre. 

A lytle bread shall do me stead: 

Much bread I not desire. 

No froste nor snow, no winde, I trowe, 

Can hurte mee if I wolde; 

I am so wrapt, and throwly lapt 

Of jolly good ale and old. 

The first English tragedy, Gorboduc, or F err ex and Porrex, 
written by Sackville and Norton about 1562, was in imitation 
of the tragedies of Seneca. The subject is taken from British 
legend and somewhat resembles the story of King Lear used by 
Shakespeare. Gorboduc is a stately tragedy, having little action, 

i A roasted crab-apple was sometimes put into a bowl of ale to give it flavor and take off 
the chill. 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



111 



a chorus, and long rhetorical speeches — characteristics of the 
Senecan drama. It is especially noteworthy that this first 
English tragedy is written in blank verse, the poetic form which 
Marlowe and his successors were to use with such splendid effect. 

THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 

The fifty or sixty years from about 1580 are the most fruitful 
in the history of dramatic literature. Within these three score 
years the Elizabethan Drama rapidly developed from somewhat 
crude beginnings, flourished for two or three decades with unex- 
ampled splendor, and then slowly waned. The Renaissance 
reached its flood tide in the great Elizabethan dramatists. The 
central figure among these, but not independent of them, is of 
course William Shakespeare. He developed along with the other 
dramatists, using the same methods and the same common stock 
of material under the same general conditions. 

Properly to understand the Elizabethan Drama we must bear 
in mind, first, that many of the play-writers had practical experi- 
ence as actors, and constructed their plays with a definite audience 
in mind; second, that these writers served a severe apprentice- 
ship by first revising or actually making over old plays; and third, 
that dramatists frequently worked together in shaping into plays 
a common fund of old stories. All three kinds of experience 
Shakespeare himself undoubtedly had. It is highly important, 
therefore, to remember that from the very first the writers of 
regular plays shaped their work directly for the stage. School- 
masters adapted classic plays for boy actors, young university 
graduates like Lyly wrote plays on classic myths for the companies 
of choir boys who acted before the court in the royal chapels; 
dramatic trainers called "Masters of the Revels" prepared spec- 
tacular entertainments, or Masques, for the court or worked over 
Italian comedies and popular English farces. Out of all this 
dramatic experimenting came definite results when a number of 
men appeared, each with sufficient constructive genius to develop 
more or less artistically into a play certain phases of life and 



112 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



thought. This group of dramatists immediately prepared the 
way for Shakespeare and his contemporaries. 

Shakespeare's Immediate Predecessors. — These men were 
George Peele, Robert Greene, John Lydy, Thomas Kyd, Chris- 
topher Marlowe, besides several others who are of less importance 
than these five. Peele 's plays are rather crude, though marked 
by passages of rare sweetness and by a strain of subtle humor. 
His best plays are David and Bethsabe and The Old Wives' Tale, 
the latter a kind of dramatized fairy tale of considerable charm. 
The sweetness and luxuriance of Peele's blank verse are seen in 
these lines from David and Bethsabe: 

Now comes my lover tripping like the roe, 
And brings my longings tangled in her hair. 
To joy her love I'll build a kingly bower, 
Seated in hearing of a hundred streams. 

Greene's best plays are Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and 
James IV: the first a medley of mediaeval legends and the delight- 
ful love-story of an English prince and a country maiden; and the 
second a romantic treatment of Scottish history. This last play 
has a coherent, well-developed plot, showing an unusual sense for 
dramatic technique. Greene's women are prototypes of Shake- 
speare's heroines who suffer persecution — Desdemona, Imogen, 
Hermione; his men and women are thoroughly English, loving 
and cherishing national traditions. Of greater importance, how- 
ever, than either Peele or Greene are Lyly and Kyd. 

JOHN LYLY (1554-1606) is known to-day as the writer of an 
affected kind of prose style to which the name "euphuism" 1 has 
been given because it is used in his prose romance Euphues (1579). 
Besides this, Lyly wrote eight court comedies, the best one of 
which is Endymion, an allegorical treatment in dramatic form of 
the classic myth about the awakening of the sleeping youth by 

1 Euphuism is an artificial form of speech in which antithesis, allitera- 
tion, elaborate conceits, and fantastic similes drawn from natural history, 
abound. Shakespeare imitated this affected style in Love's Labor's Lost, 
and here and there in other plays; e. g., I Henry IV, ii, 4, and Hamlet V, 2 
(Osric's speeches). 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



113 



the kiss of the moon goddess. Lyly's plays were written for a 
cultivated court circle and accordingly show more refinement 
than other comedies of the time, depending for their interest on 
skilful phrasing, verbal fencing, graceful allusion, antithesis, similes, 
and subtle conceits. He refined comedy by making it aesthetic 
and intellectual. Lyly's plots are highly artificial, but they have 
unity and artistic form; they are expressed in prose of delicacy 
and distinction, such as we find in the witty word-fencing of 
Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Lyly was the first 
writer of high prose comedy in English literature, and to him 
Ben Jonson's comedy of manners and Shakespeare's romantic 
comedy owe something; for Lyly's plays are refined transcripts 
of court manners and court talk. 

THOMAS KYD (1558-1595) wrote one famous play, The Spanish 
Tragedy, belonging to the "tragedy of blood," or that species of 
Elizabethan tragedy in which the motives are murder and revenge. 
The Spanish Tragedy, immensely popular in its day, was the fore- 
runner of many blood-and-thunder plays, such as Titus Androni- 
cus, for example; it shows the influence of the tragedies of Seneca 
the Latin dramatist, though it is far more complex and romantic. 
Kyd's play bears some resemblance to Hamlet: indeed, the device 
of the play within the play, the presence of the ghost, and the 
nature of the story, along with evidence too technical to be con- 
sidered here, give probability to the theory that Kyd was author 
of an earlier Hamlet, now lost/, At all events, it is certain that 
Kyd greatly influenced succeeding dramatists, and that his 
Spanish Tragedy and Marlowe's Tamburlaine introduced a new 
and powerful type of romantic tragedy. Of all the predecessors 
of Shakespeare, however, Christopher Marlowe best deserves 
extended consideration. 

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564-1593) 

His Life. — Of the details of Marlowe's life very little is known; this is 
true, indeed, of most of the earlier Elizabethan dramatists. Christopher 
Marlowe, son of a poor shoemaker, was born in the old cathedral town of 
Canterbury in 1564, two months before Shakespeare. After studying at the 



114 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



King's School in his native town he entered Benet College (now Corpus 
Christi College), Cambridge University, where he spent several years, 
devoting his attention mainly to the classics. After taking his degree, 
Marlowe went to London and joined the Lord Admiral's company of players, 

a rival company of the Lord Chamber- 
lain's to which Shakespeare was attached. 
Here he spent the remaining years of his 
short life, one among that somewhat riot- 
ous Bohemian society of actors and play- 
wrights whose lively activities centered 
about the theaters on the Bankside. In 
1587 appeared Marlowe's first play, Tam- 
burlaine; others followed in fairly rapid 
succession. It was evident that at last a 
bold and original genius had spoken out. 
Then of course jealousies arose; Marlowe 
was branded as a heretic; his enemies 
nagged him. Meanwhile, he enjoyed the 
patronage of great courtiers who recog- 
nized his remarkable gifts. Violent, no 
doubt, his temperament was; besides, the 
virtue of self-restraint was hardly to be 
expected amid the storm and stress of 
his surroundings. At the age of twenty- 
BIRTHPLACE OF MARLOWE nine Marlowe was fatally stabbed in a 
Canterbury tavern brawl at the village of Deptford, 

near London. 

His Plays. — Within a period of five years Marlowe wrote half 
a dozen plays besides two sections of a poem called Hero and 
Leander. Four of these plays have made secure his fame as the 
first great Elizabethan dramatist. The earliest of them is Tarn- 
burlaine the Great, in two parts of five acts each. Tamburlaine 
was a Scythian shepherd who by his marvelous conquests became 
a mighty monarch, spreading terror over the earth as he rode in 
barbaric triumph in chariots drawn by vanquished kings. The 
play has an epic largeness: the language is often extravagant and 
bombastic, while the poetic imagery is at times a riot of sound 
and color. There is youthful exuberance with splendid passion 
and daring aspiration in these famous lines which voice the intel- 
lectual ambitions of Elizabethan England: 




THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



115 



Nature that framed us of four elements, 
Warring in our breasts for regiment, 
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds: 
Our souls, — whose faculties can comprehend 
The wondrous architecture of the world, 
And measure every wandering planet's course, 
Still climbing after knowledge infinite, 
And always moving as the restless spheres, — 
Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest. 

Marlowe's next play is Doctor Faustus, the story of the mediae- 
val scholar who pledged his soul to the devil for twenty-four 
years of pleasure and power. Accompanied by Mephistophilis 
Faustus visits realms ancient and modern, learns the secrets of 
magic arts, acquires vast knowledge, and at last is carried off 
in agony to hell. The play of Faustus is made up of scenes loosely 
strung together with little unity of design and disfigured with 
comic episodes of rather forced humor. In spite of its poor struc- 
ture, the play holds the interest because of many striking scenes 
and certain passages of rare poetic beauty, such, for instance, as 
Faustus' enraptured speech to Helen: 

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships 
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? 
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss, 
Oh thou art fairer than the evening air 
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars. 

The Jew of Malta, Marlowe's third play, deals with Barabbas 
the Jew and his lust for money. Barabbas is a sort of first rough 
sketch of a character which was artistically finished in Shake- 
speare's Shylock. Marlowe's Jew is an unrelieved monster, the 
center of an accumulation of horrors which finally overwhelm 
him. After the first two or three acts the play becomes a bloody 
melodrama, though the structure is better than in the two pre- 
ceding plays. 

The last of Marlowe's dramas is Edward II, the tragic story of 
a weak king who lost his throne. Excellent in technique, restrained 
in emotion, strong in characterization, Edward II is Marlowe's 
masterpiece. 



116 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



His Contribution. — Following the bent of his own fiery genius 
and striking boldly out into the unknown, Marlowe freed him- 
self and the English drama from the rigid bondage of the classical 
rules. He violated the unities of time and place, introduced 
violent action on the stage, and infused into his central characters 
something of his own indomitable spirit. His dramas have been 
called "one-man plays," because in each there is one dominating 
personality typifying one controlling passion. In Tamburlaine 
we see the inordinate desire for conquest; in Faustus, the inordi- 
nate desire for knowledge and pleasure; in Barabbas the Jew, the 
inordinate desire for wealth; and in Edward, excessive devotion 
to a favorite. 

Marlowe's first and most important contribution, then, is in 
freeing tragedy from classic formalism and thus preparing the 
way for Shakespeare and the full-fledged romantic drama. He 
was lacking in the ability to create complex character and to 
give his plays sustained action, and he was wanting in humor and 
other humanizing qualities; yet he was the first to show the world 
the immense possibilities of the Elizabethan Drama. Marlowe's 
second contribution is in revealing the capabilities of blank verse. 
Before Marlowe's Tamburlaine appeared, this form of verse, first 
used by Surrey, was cramped and mechanical, lacking in rhythmic 
freedom of movement. Marlowe in the Prologue to Tamburlaine 
boldly announces his purpose: 

From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits, 
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, 
We'll lead to you the stately tent of war, 
Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine 
Threatening the world with high astounding terms, 
And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword. 

He kept his word. His verse is rich and free, as untrammeled as 
his own daring genius; it rises and falls with the tide of emotion; 
it has such swing and majesty as fully to deserve Ben Jonson's 
passing tribute — "Marlowe's mighty line." Marlowe made blank 
verse a fit instrument of poetic expression, and Shakespeare and 
Milton perfected it. 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



117 



The Several Dramatic Types. — For the sake of greater clear- 
ness it may be well briefly to enumerate just here the several 
types of drama which had pretty clearly defined themselves by 
1590, when the careers of Shakespeare and his contemporaries 
were beginning. These various classes of plays developed with 
remarkable rapidity after the appearance of the first regular 
English drama thirty or forty years before, and flourished through- 
out the Elizabethan period. (1) Court Plays on classical themes 
romantically treated, chiefly by John Lyly. (2) Romantic Drama, 
Comedy and Tragedy, including such plays as Greene's Orlando 
Furioso, The Spanish Tragedy, Tamburlaine, and, later, most of 
Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies. Many of these romantic 
dramas were based on Italian sources. (3) Domestic Drama, a 
development of the native and local element, as early shown, for 
example, in Gammer Gurton's Needle. To this form of drama be- 
long such later plays as Thomas Heywood's Woman Killed with 
Kindness, Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor, the Comedy of 
Manners of Ben Jonson, and others. (4) Historical Drama, 
based on English history, biography, and legend, and usually 
known as Chronicle Plays, an early example of which is Bale's 
King Johan, already mentioned. Shakespeare's historical plays 
belong to this type, the popularity of which is attested by the 
fact that over two hundred chronicle plays were written within 
this period. In them the strong spirit of nationality after the 
victory over the Spanish Armada jubilantly expressed itself. 
These are the principal dramatic types which the great Elizabethan 
playwrights developed with more or less regularity. 

The Elizabethan Theater. — The earliest plays had been acted 
on rude platforms in the open air, in halls of schools and castles, 
and in the courtyards of inns; up to 1576 no building for the 
public performance of plays had been erected. In that year the 
first London theater was built outside the northern wall of the 
city by James Burbage, father of the actor Richard Burbage, and 
named the Theater; soon another playhouse, called the Curtain, 
was erected in the same neighborhood. During the next twenty 
years the Bankside, or south (Surrey) bank, of the Thames came 



118 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



to be the theatrical center, and here by 1600 there were three 
great public theaters, the Rose, the Swan, and the Globe. Another 
public theater, the Fortune, was situated northwest of the walls; 
while the one prominent private theater, the Blackfriars, was 
within the city proper. The Thames was the great thoroughfare 
of London, and the south bank had long been the region of popular 
amusements, such, for instance, as bearbaiting and cockfighting. 




GLOBE THEATER IN SHAKESPEARE'S DAY 



Naturally, then, the Bankside became the popular theater district : 
here there was plenty of room, there was little danger from fire 
and pestilence, and there was freedom from Puritan interference 
with the boisterous and often unruly crowds on pleasure bent. 
These Bankside theaters, be it remembered, were public play- 
houses; for more select audiences the great halls in the houses of 
nobles or in royal palaces were the theaters, the Blackfriars being 
a popular extension of this more exclusive type. 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



119 



The public theater was modeled after the courtyard of an inn, 
for a long time the favorite place of performance ; while the private 
theater was in the nature of a room converted into a playhouse. 
Public theaters were round or hexagonal or octagonal, and one, 




VIEW OF ELIZABETHAN STAGE 
Timon of Athens, V, 4 
By Permission of Columbia University Press 



the Fortune, was square; they were constructed of wood and a 
sort of concrete. Within, the three stories formed three galleries 
after the manner of those around an inn yard. In these galleries 
sat the better class of spectators, while the large ground-space, or 



120 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



pit, was occupied by the lower class, who noisily joked and jostled 
each other, smoked, ate, drank, and sometimes annoyed the players; 
for as the "groundlings" had to stand, they would naturally 
grow restless. The galleries were roofed over, but the pit was open 
to the weather. The stage projected far out into the pit, and on 
this broad platform the greater part of the action took place; 
back of this, however, was a space, or alcove, which could be cut 
off by a curtain strung from two pillars and used for inner scenes. 
Above this alcove was a balcony, or upper stage, which would 
be used, for instance, by Juliet in her famous moonlight interview 
with Romeo, or for representing a besieged army on the walls 
of a city. Above the little balcony and the back part of the stage 
was a roof, though most of the stage was uncovered. 

More scenery was in use on an Elizabethan stage than is com- 
monly supposed: such properties as trees, beds, thrones, tombs, 
wells, couches, and tables were common; there was machinery for 
lowering and raising supernatural characters; and painted scenes 
of a simple kind were used in private theaters. The costumes of 
the actors were quite elaborate, but no attempt was made at 
historical accuracy. Performances were given at two or three 
o'clock in the afternoon, lasting about two and a half hours, with 
no pauses between acts. In the private theaters, however, per- 
formances took place at night; the buildings were completely 
roofed and more luxuriously furnished. Players formed themselves 
into companies under the nominal patronage of some nobleman; 
women's parts were played by men or boys. Under these general 
conditions, then, was an Elizabethan play presented; and a clear 
understanding of the Shakespearean drama is not possible without 
some definite knowledge of the inside of an Elizabethan theater. 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616) 

His Life. — William Shakespeare, the greatest figure in our literature, was 
born in the little Warwickshire town of Stratford, on the winding Avon, in 
the month of April, 1564. In the church register is the record of the bap- 
tism of William, son of John Shakespeare, on April 26; as this ceremony 
usually took place when a child was three days old, April 23 (May 3 by the 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 




TITLE-PAGE OF FIRST FOLIO EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS 
From a copy in the Britieh Museum 



122 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



"new style" reckoning) has come to be regarded as the day of his birth. 
His father John Shakespeare, who kept a general produce store in Stratford, 
came of an ancestry of sturdy farmers; his mother Mary Arden was the 
daughter of a rich landowner near Stratford. During the poet's childhood 
John Shakespeare held from time to time various public offices in the little 
town. William was the third of his eight children. The life of Shake- 
speare falls naturally into three periods: (1) The Early Years at Stratford; 
(2) The London Years; (3) The Closing Years in Stratford. 




STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
Shakespeare is buried in Trinity Church, shown in the background. 



The Early Years at Stratford (1564-1587).— Stratford is delightfully situ- 
ated in the charming midland district of England with its peaceful meadows, 
hawthorn hedges, stately elms, rose gardens, and shining streams. The 
Avon flows in graceful curve around the town by dipping willows, under 
arched bridges, and past the fine old church where the poet's body rests. 
The church, the guildhall, the grammar school, and a few other buildings, 
such, for instance, as the John Harvard House, look very much as they did 
in Elizabeth's day when Stratford was a village of about fifteen hundred 
souls. A mile off across the meadows is the little village of Shottery near 
which Anne Hathaway lived in the rustic cottage now famous over all the 
world. To this and to the birthplace in Henley Street and the other Strat- 
ford houses and spots associated with the master, thousands of pilgrims go 
every year as to a shrine. The whole region is romantic with traditions 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



123 



that cluster about the countryside, the castle, and the ruin. Not far away 
is Warwick Castle with its antique towers and baronial halls and Guy of 
Warwick legends; in walking distance are the ruins of Kenilworth Castle 
where Leicester entertained the queen in 1575, and whither the boy William 
may have often rambled; at no great distance is the town of Coventry where 
the miracle plays were given; and nearer to Stratford is Charlecote, the 
great countryhouse of Sir Thomas Lucy, whose deer young William is said 
to have stolen. In such a region was William Shakespeare brought up. 

Shakespeare attended the Stratford Grammar School, where he studied 
Lilly's Latin Grammar and read a number of the Latin classics, learned a 
little mathematics, and no doubt read and memorized parts of the English 
Bible. He must have left school at thirteen or fourteen in order to help 
his father in his business, for we know that about this time John Shakespeare 
was becoming seriously involved; and thus the youth was early brought in 
touch with practical affairs in the struggle against poverty. In 1582 the 
eighteen-year old Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, eight years older 
than himself. Four or five years later he left Stratford for the great world 
of London. The causes of his leaving, it may be surmised, were at least 
three: the need of a more adequate support for his wife and three children; the 
wish to relieve his father's declining fortunes; the ambitious desire to try 
his own fortune in a wider field of action. There is no just ground for the 
suggestion that his early departure was due to an unhappy marriage; there 
may be, however, some truth in the tradition which makes the deer-steal- 
ing incident at Charlecote an occasion of his leaving Stratford; it is more 
likely, indeed, that traveling companies of actors fired the young man's 
blood with stories of London life. At all events, to the great metropolis 
William Shakespeare went about 1586. 

The London Years (1587-1611).— Of the details of the twenty-odd years 
of Shakespeare's life in London we have little knowledge; indeed, this is 
true of his life in general, as it is true of the lives of most of his fellow-drama- 
tists. At first he probably performed menial tasks about the theaters, 
where he fell in with actors and playwrights; then he became an actor him- 
self, and next learned how to work over old plays for presentation; from this 
apprenticeship he would naturally pass to the writing of plays. We know, 
thanks to the discoveries of an American scholar, 1 that Shakespeare had 
lodgings for some time at the house of a worthy Huguenot family named 
Mount joy in Cripplegate, an eminently respectable part of London, and that 
he helped to arrange the marriage contract between his host's daughter and 
a young apprentice. References to Shakespeare in connection with this 
transaction and as a witness in a subsequent lawsuit, because of the non- 



l Professor C. W. Wallace, of the University of Nebraska, discovered in the Public Record 
Office, London, in 1909, certain documents on the matter referred to in the text. See Harper's 
Magazine for March, 1910. 



124 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



fulfilment of marriage settlements, indicate that the poet was held in high 
esteem by his neighbors 

Shakespeare held shares in the Blackfriars and Globe theaters, and he 
purchased considerable land and the best house in Stratford. It is alto- 
gether likely that he visited his native town from time to time: his only son, 
Hamnet, died in 1596, and Susannah, his eldest daughter, was married in 
1607 to Dr. John Hall. Shakespeare's life in London was in close association 
with that famous group of dramatists who were wont to gather at the Mer- 




ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE, NEAR STRATFORD-ON-AVON 



maid in Cheapside for "wit combats," but his friendly relations with the 
Earls of Pembroke and Southampton suggest a higher degree of social 
recognition than that to which most of his colleagues attained. The London 
years, then, were the productive years of Shakespeare's career: as a member 
of the Lord Chamberlain's Company he was a successful actor before public 
and court audiences; he wrote about two plays a year to be acted before 
these audiences; he wrote, besides, non-dramatic poetry and dedicated it to 
noblemen; he accumulated property. 

The Closing Years in Stratford (1611-1616).— About 1611 Shakespeare must 
have returned to Stratford for good, though he afterward made several visits 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



125 



to London. Just why, almost in the midst of a successful career, he should 
have left the busy world of London for the little country town of Stratford, 
we do not certainly know; perhaps he longed for a more leisurely, meditative 
life in his handsome village house with his family, whom he was now abun- 
dantly able to maintain in luxury; perhaps the newer type of play, gaudily 
melodramatic, which was rapidly growing infavor with the satiated London 
public, excited his disgust and made him resolve to "abjure his magic, break 
his staff^ drown his book," and settle down fancy free by the quiet Avon. 
However that may be, to Stratford he assuredly returned and at New Place, 
in the heart of the town and near the guildhall, spent the rest of his days. 

Here we may picture him entertaining his friends from the city, mingling 
with his neighbors as the public-spirited citizen, and reflecting on those 
serener aspects of human life with which his latest plays have to do. Two 
months after the marriage of his youngest daughter Judith to Thomas 
Quiney, son of an old friend and neighbor, the great poet and dramatist died, 
April 23, 1616, at the age of fifty-two. He was buried in the chancel of the 
Stratford church; and on the flat stone over his grave were engraved these 
now famous words by the poet himself, the purpose evidently being to pre- 
vent some superstitious sexton from removing the body for a richer tenant: 

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear 
To dig the dust enclosed here; 
Blest be the man that spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones. 

Seven years later a monument 1 to the poet was placed in the wall just over 
the tomb, consisting of a bust between columns, below which are inscribed 
tributes to his genius. 

His Personality. — Contemporary references to Shakespeare 
make mention of his "civil demeanour," his "right happy and 
copious industry/' characterizing him as "sweet Master Shake- 
speare'' and "gentle Shakespeare." Among these Ben Jonson's 
cordial tribute deserves to be quoted: "I loved the man, and do 
honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any. He 
was, indeed, honest, and of an open and free nature; had an 
excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions, wherein 
he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he 
should be stopped." In later traditions collected by Aubrey the 
antiquary (born 1626), he is referred to as "very good com- 



i See frontispiece. 



126 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



pany, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit." These 
and other references, to say nothing of indirect evidence from the 
plays themselves, warrant the statement of Sidney Lee, his 
scholarly biographer, that Shakespeare had "a genial tempera- 
ment linked to a quiet turn for good-humoured satire." 

But there is another side to Shakespeare's character: joined 
with his extraordinary literary powers and his general sociability 
was a shrewd capacity for practical affairs. He was more interested 
in restoring the family name at Stratford by paying off his father's 
debts, getting a coat-of-arms, and buying real estate in the town, 
than he was in writing for posterity. In London, because of his 
large share-holdings in two theaters and other sources of income, 
he was no doubt regarded as a prosperous business man; it has 
been estimated, indeed, that at the height of his success Shake- 
speare's total annual income from various sources was in present 
monetary values not less than $25,000. We have, moreover, 
accounts of numerous lawsuits for the recovery of debts in which 
the poet was the plaintiff. 

As to Shakespeare's political and religious opinions, it is safe 
to say that they were in general those of the patriotic English- 
man of the day; more tolerant, no doubt, than those of the masses 
or of the nobility, because freer from the provincialism of the one 
and from the somewhat narrow conventionalism of the other. 
There could hardly be a more futile undertaking, however, than 
to attempt to construct either a political or a religious creed for 
a great dramatist like Shakespeare out of the speeches of his 
characters. 

A well-rounded, full-blooded, keenly observant, kindly, won- 
drously wise and highly gifted man; primarily a poet and play- 
wright, and incidentally a philosopher — such, we may conclude, 
was William Shakespeare the Man. 

His Dramatic Works. — Shakespeare's career of authorship 
extends over a period of about twenty years (1590-1611), during 
which he wrote something like thirty-seven plays, two narrative 
poems, one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, and a number of songs 
scattered through the plays. His work may therefore be considered 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



127 



under two divisions: (1) the Dramas, and (2) the Non-dramatic 
Poems. 

The dramas of Shakespeare have come down to us in two 
forms, the quarto edition and the folio edition : the quarto is a 
copy of a single play, the folio a collection of all the plays in a 
single volume. In 1623 two of Shakespeare's fellow-actors, Hem- 
ing and Condell, brought out what is known as the First Folio, 
a large volume containing all the plays except Pericles and based 
on the manuscripts in possession of the theatrical companies; 
previous to this a number of the plays had appeared in quarto, 
or single, editions. Authors usually sold their plays to theatrical 
managers and made no effort to get them into print; the result 
was that popular plays were likely to be issued by unscrupulous 
publishers from inaccurate shorthand copies made in the theater. 
Many of Shakespeare's plays appeared in these "pirated" quarto 
editions before 1623, when the First Folio, or complete authorized 
edition of the plays, was published, the importance of which can 
hardly be overestimated. In this volume the plays are divided 
into Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies, a convenient and popular, 
though somewhat inaccurate classification. It is, on the whole, 
more satisfactory to arrange them into four groups correspond- 
ing to the four periods of Shakespeare's dramatic development. 1 

The Four Periods. — The first period extends from about 1590 
to 1595 and may be called the Period of Apprenticeship. To 
this belong such early plays as Love's Labour's Lost, Comedy of 
Errors, Richard III, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and probably 
Romeo and Juliet During these years the dramatist was experi- 
menting, learning his art; at first he retouched old plays, worked 
with some more experienced playwright, then developed his sub- 
ject alone, trying his hand at histories, comedies, tragedies. 
These early dramas abound in word-play, pretty conceits, rhymes, 
and in other evidences of youthful fancy; the verse lacks freedom 

1 A complete list of Shakespeare's plays is not given here. See an excel- 
lent recent work, Introduction to Shakespeare, by MacCracken, Pierce, and 
Durham; see also Dowden's Shakspere Primer. 



128 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Midfommer nights 
drcame. 

As it hath beene fundry times pub- 
Ul$ly aUed t by the %ight Honours 
ble, the Lord Chamberlaine his 
JemantL 

VVrtotn hy William Sbafyfpeaxe*, 




Trinted f blames tyberts, 160Q. 

TITLE-PAGE OF QUARTO EDITION OF 

A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1600 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



129 



of movement; the structure is loose-jointed; but along with the 
faults of immaturity there is the promise of mastery. 

The second period covers the years from 1595 to 1600 and may 
be named the Period of Mastery. Here belong the historical 
plays, Henry IV and Henry V, and the comedies, Merchant of 
Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, 
and others. By this time the poet has a masterful grasp on plot 
and a greater ease of expression; he is interested in depicting the 
active, joyous side of life; his heroes, lovers, and ladies are full of 
brilliant talk and irrepressible gayety. In this period Shakespeare 
shows himself the man of the world mainly concerned with the 
outward things of life, but as yet untouched by deeper problems 
of human destiny. 

The third period extends from 1600 to about 1608 and may be 
called the Period of Tragic Gloom. Within these years were 
written the great tragedies, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, 
Othello and King Lear, besides the dark and serious comedies, 
All's Well and Measure for Measure. The poet's mood has 
changed from genial gladness to somber world-weariness and 
even bitterness. We do not know what wrought this change; 
perhaps it was some great personal sorrow, or show of ingrati- 
tude from former friends — the sting of "benefits forgot"; more 
likely, it was deep reflection upon the baffling mysteries of life, — 
what Wordsworth calls 

the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world. 

Certain it is, at any rate, that in this period of the full maturity 
of his powers Shakespeare was interested in the supreme moral 
problems of the world and made them the themes of his mightiest 
dramas; while the comedies of this third period are shot through 
with such dark threads of bitter irony that they tremble on the 
verge of tragedy. In the group of tragedies belonging to these 
years he achieved supremacy in his art. 

The fourth period includes the remaining years of dramatic 
activity, from 1608 to about 1611-'12, and we may name this 



130 



ENGLISH LITERATORE 



the Period of Serenity. Here belong the Tempest, Cymbeline, 
and the Winter's Tale, comedies of such beauty and charm that 
they are often called "romances." The bitterness and gloom of 
the third period have disappeared; so has the rollicking joy ousness 
of the second period; in their stead we find an atmosphere of 
serenity and calm. Supernatural beings cooperate with mortals 
to bring about a reign of universal peace and good will; mercy, 
reconciliation, forgiveness, are the shining virtues of the golden 
days of these latest dramas; sufferings and misunderstandings 
are forgotten in the final reunion at eventide. "Be cheerful, sir," 
says Prospero to Ferdinand : 

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 
Are melted into air, into thin air; 
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep. 

In order fully to appreciate this four-fold grouping of the plays 
as illustrating the development of Shakespeare's mind and art, 
one should read in succession four plays, a typical play from 
each period, paying careful attention to the movement of the 
lines by reading a number of them aloud, noting the puns and 
the rhymes, observing whether the characters act and talk in a 
lifelike manner, whether the story is well put together and whether 
it works steadily towards a definite and inevitable end. The 
reading of several plays from each group in regular order would 
lead to the conviction that in dramatic technique, in characteri- 
zation, and in expression, a steady development is shown, from 
the crudities of such plays as Love's Labour's Lost and Richard 
III, on through the masterful story-telling and character-deline- 
ation of the Merchant of Venice and Henry IV (Falstaff), to the 



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complex plots and subtle character-study of Hamlet and Lear 
and the perfect ripeness of the Tempest. 

Doubtful Plays. — There are a few plays which are usually 
classified as "doubtful plays," because it is fairly well settled that 
Shakespeare was author of only parts of them. Titus Andronicus, a 
crude and revolting "tragedy of blood," is evidently an old play 
worked over by Shakespeare in his early apprenticeship period; 
Henry VI (three parts) is the reconstruction of an old chronicle 
play by Shakespeare along with one or more of his early fellow- 
dramatists; Richard III is in part by Marlowe, or at least in 
imitation of Marlowe; parts of Taming of the Shrew, Timon of 
Athens, and Pericles, are by an unknown author; John Fletcher, 
the popular dramatist, must have had a hand in Henry VIII, for 
the style and meter of a number of scenes are un-Shakespearean 
but quite in the manner of Fletcher. The evidence on which 
scholars have based their conclusions as to the divided authorship 
of these plays is mainly internal, — that is, concerned with such 
matters as style, meter, technique, characterization. Several 
plays were at one time ascribed to Shakespeare with which he 
evidently had nothing to do; only one of these, indeed, the 
Two Noble Kinsmen, can justly lay claim to any Shakespearean 
quality. 

Sources of the Plays. — There existed in accessible form in the 
Elizabethan Age a large fund of stories which the dramatists of 
that period were accustomed to use as raw material for plays, 
and Shakespeare in common with his fellow playwrights dre*w 
freely upon this stock. The more intelligent of the numerous 
patrons of the theaters doubtless knew these stories already, but 
that did not interfere with their enjoyment of them in attractive 
dramatic form; indeed, they enjoyed them all the more when 
cleverly dramatized. To transmute this crude material into the 
fine gold of real art demanded the highest genius; this becomes 
perfectly evident to any one who will take the trouble to compare 
a Shakespeare play with the prosaic narrative from which he 
drew the bare facts. In his hands dry-as-dust chronicles, to 
paraphrase the exquisite lines of Ariel's song, "suffer a change 



132 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



into something rich and strange"; a half- civilized Dane of 
legendary story is transformed into the intellectual and courtly 
Hamlet. 

The principal sources of Shakespeare's plays and, in fact, of 
the Elizabethan dramatists in general, are three: (1) Holinshed's 
Chronicles and Plutarch's Lives — the first a voluminous history of 
England, Scotland, and Ireland, published in 1578; and the sec- 
ond a volume of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans by a 
Greek author of the first century, a popular translation of which 
into English was made in 1579 by Thomas North. From Holin- 
shed Shakespeare got his material for the historical plays as well 
as for two tragedies, Macbeth and King Lear, and one comedy, 
Cymbeline; and from North's Plutarch, the biographical matter for 
the tragedies of Julius Caesar , Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleo- 
patra. (2) Italian and other romances, translations of which were 
common in England before Shakespeare began to write. From 
these stories, or "novelle" as the Italian romances were called, 
the bare plots of many comedies — Merchant of Venice, Much Ado 
About Nothing and Twelfth Night, for instance — and of one tra- 
gedy, Othello, were borrowed. (3) Material from older and cruder 
plays. This working over of old dramatic material was customary 
among the dramatists of the day; and several of Shakespeare's 
plays — Richard III, Taming of the Shrew, and King Lear, for ex- 
ample — are based more or less directly on old plays, though the 
new are, in life and art, infinitely removed from the old. The 
great dramatist changed the baser metal into gold through the 
magic of his alchemy. 

The Non-dramatic Poetry.— Besides the dramatic works Shake- 
speare wrote two narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and the 
Rape of Lucrece, and a number of sonnets. . Venus and Adonis, a 
poem of about twelve hundred lines, is based on the old classical 
story found in the Latin poet Ovid about the love of Venus for 
the beautiful youth Adonis; it is written in six-line stanzas, with 
five beats to the line of ten syllables, or iambic pentameter, the 
measure of the dramatic poetry. Lucrece, a longer poem than the 
other, relates the old Roman legend about the dishonoring of 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



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the virtuous wife of a noble by the Roman king Tarquin and the 
consequent overthrow of that monarch; this is in seven-line stanzas, 
the Chaucerian "rhyme royal." Both poems are dedicated to 
Shakespeare's patron, the young Earl of Southampton, and are 
thought to have been written about 1593-'4. They abound in 
youthful fancies, striking bits of description, and pleasing sounds, 
but are more interesting to-day as promising first-fruits of genius 
than for any great intrinsic excellence. 

With Shakespeare's Sonnets it is different; we would not willingly 
part with them. These sonnets, one hundred and fifty-four in 
all, have been a great puzzle to Shakespearian scholars: some 
critics interpret them as intensely personal, reflecting the poet's 
innermost feelings, "Shakespeare's Psalms," as Furnivall calls 
them; others, notably Sidney Lee, regard the sonnets as more or 
less conventional poetic exercises in a period when sonnet-writing 
was a prevailing fashion, every poet and courtier trying his hand 
at making them. The truth is probably to be found somewhere 
between these extremes: some of the sonnets have a tone of such 
high seriousness, such a depth of emotion, that we feel they must 
come from the poet's heart; others seem artificial, even trivial, 
as if written for mere pastime. More than three fourths of the 
sonnets are addressed to a man, a friend of the writer, and the 
rest to a woman, the mysterious "dark lady," of whose affection 
the man had robbed the poet; but the poet forgives the man 
because of his deep friendship for him — this is the substance of the 
slight narrative element which seems vaguely to shadow forth a 
real experience. The sonnets should be read for the exquisite 
poetry to be found in many of them, and not for profitless dis- 
cussion; their haunting melody, mellow suggestiveness, and 
golden imagery, linger with the reader, soothing and refreshing 
him. Take this one, for instance: 

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 

I summon up remembrance of things past, 

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 

And with old woes now wail my dear time's waste: 



134, 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, 

And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe, 

And moan the expense of many a vanished sight; 

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, 

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, 

Which I now pay as if not paid before. 

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, 

All losses are restored and sorrows end. 

Or consider such stately, imaginative, musical, forward-looking 
lines as these, chosen here and there: 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds. 



Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, 
Kissing with golden face the meadows green, 
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy. 



Haply I think on thee, and then my state, 

Like to the lark at break of day arising 

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate. 



Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul 
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come. 

» 

The Sonnets were published in 1609, though written within the 
years 1594-1603 ; in them the Elizabethan sonnet (three quatrains 
with a closing couplet) reached its highest excellence. 

Shakespeare was also a song-maker, as were most of the Eliza- 
bethan dramatists; the numerous lyrics in his plays run the whole 
gamut of emotion, from the sensuous gayety of drinking songs 
and the sentimental appeal of serenade music to the almost hymn- 
like solemnity of the dirge in Cymbeline and the haunting echo- 
effect of Ariel's songs in the Tempest, All these lyrics seem to be 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



135 



the spontaneous overflow of real feeling, gay or grave; their pre- 
vailing traits are simplicity and naturalness. 

Shakespearean Characteristics and Influence. — No general 
estimate of Shakespeare can amount to much which begins and 
ends, as too many estimates have done, by detaching him from 
his age and purpose. He was an Elizabethan, lived and worked 
with Elizabethans upon common dramatic material, and wrote 
plays primarily intended to be played before Elizabethans. These 
facts must not be lost sight of in the midst of our just admiration 
for his splendid achievement, if we would interpret the man and 
his plays aright. His plays should be studied in the light of their 
development and in relation to the physical conditions of the 
Elizabethan stage on which they were acted; when so studied 
many incidents and situations no longer seem forced and unnatural. 
For instance, when we know that Two Gentlemen of Verona belongs 
to the earliest, or Apprenticeship Period, we are scarcely surprised 
at the abrupt, illogical ending of the play in the sudden forgive- 
ness of a treacherous friend and lover; and when we realize how 
little scenery there was in an Elizabethan theater, we cease to 
wonder at the many long and sometimes tedious descriptive pas- 
sages in the plays. The steady growth of Shakespeare's mind and 
art is manifest to any thoughtful reader; his genius did not come 
to full fruition suddenly, but only after long and painstaking labor 
at his art: from Richard to Hamlet, from Julia and Juliet to 
Portia and Cleopatra, from Henry V to Prospero, is a great 
way. 

When we look into the plays even superficially, we are struck 
with the amazing range of his information and his deep and 
searching knowledge of human nature. This information is not 
always scientifically accurate, to be sure; there are anachronisms, 
geographical impossibilities, tricksy tamperings with facts; but 
what of it? With Shakespeare always "the play's the thing"; 
human nature is the one constant quantity through the ages, 
and to that he is ever true; his aim in his plays was "to hold the 
mirror up to nature," not to be learned and exact. It is a great 



136 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



mistake, indeed, to suppose that Shakespeare was learned in an 
academic sense, or that he was primarily a philosopher. He was 
a close observer of life in an age of remarkable vitality and in a 
city of endless opportunities for the study of every type of human- 
ity; as an actor and man of the world he must have mingled freely 
in this moving throng. He was, moreover, a wide reader at a 
time when the flood tide of the Renaissance was bringing into 
England the best literature of the continent; translations of the 
ancient classics, of French and Italian romances, were accessible; 
he no doubt had access to the libraries of his noble friends and 
patrons. Besides, it will be remembered, Shakespeare had con- 
siderable experience in practical affairs; he was concerned in 
lawsuits, the purchase and selling of real estate, the management 
of theaters. All this was a liberal education. Add to this the gift 
of genius and the habit of hard work, and it is not so difficult to 
understand why Shakespeare possessed wide information about 
literature and life. 

The lifelikeness of his characters is as wonderful as the bewilder- 
ing variety of them. We pay Shakespeare the greatest of compli- 
ments when we talk of his characters as if they were actual men 
and women, and that is just what the English-speaking world 
has been doing since they became a part of our literature. They 
have long ago superseded their historic or legendary prototypes 
in the popular mind; kings and princes have been re-created, 
lovers and ladies of the ancient and mediaeval worlds snatched 
from oblivion and endued with familiar immortality, common- 
place clowns and jesters ennobled with wit and large humanity. 
They do not form a picture gallery, but a vast community of 
living men and women, each a distinct individual whom we see 
and know apart from the rest. They talk and act as people do 
in real life; they do not suggest each other, they do not repeat 
each other. Try as we will, we cannot think them out of existence; 
their motives are their own and come from within, and they 
influence one another out of their own volition and not from 
external compulsion. Their personalities are complex, a mingling 
of good and evil impulses, the good or the evil prevailing accord- 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



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mg to circumstances and the strength or weakness of the will; 
few approach to sainthood and only two, lago and Edmund, are 
pure villains. They are subject to the laws of a moral universe, 
and they illustrate the working of ethical principles in the great 
crises of life : to the evildoer retribution comes in the awful ruin 
of the soul, as to Macbeth, and the innocent may be involved in 
the wreck. 

Shakespeare does not attempt to penetrate beyond the veil 
into the future life, but his profound studies of moral problems 
in the greater plays have a distinctly spiritual value in that they 
strengthen our belief in goodness, purity, and the perfectibility 
of character, and cause us to renew our allegiance to noble ideals. 
His range is almost infinite : the stateliness and gloom of tragedy, 
the rollicking jollity, sprightliness, and serene romantic beauty 
of comedy, pathos and humor, the terrible and the trivial, all 
come within his ken. And through it all is seen Shakespeare's 
tolerant sympathy; he does not trifle with his characters, as some 
of his contemporaries do, does not treat them as puppets; to 
him, and for that reason to us, they are men and women with 
the sacred rights of personality. 

Shakespeare's influence on our language and our literature it 
would be impossible to estimate; from his vast vocabulary our 
speech has been immeasurably enriched; his plays and the King 
James translation of the Bible (1611) have done more to fix the 
mother tongue than any other English classics. In our literature 
idioms and phrases from his plays have been assimilated until 
they are regarded as common literary property, while in the daily 
speech of educated men and women they have long been current 
coin. If we have been fortunate enough in our youth to make 
the acquaintance of his characters, we have gained a host of dis- 
tinguished friends who have created for us standards of life and 
art whereby we may know the good, the true, and the beautiful 
when we meet them. To the imperial intellect that shaped that 
world of high poetry and lifelike action we may fitly apply the 
exclamation of Hamlet: "How noble in reason! how infinite in 
faculty! in apprehension how like a god!" 



138 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



SHAKESPEARE'S CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS 

To us Shakespeare is such a dominating figure in the Eliza- 
bethan Drama that we are likely to detach him unduly from his 
dramatic contemporaries; preeminent, indeed, he is in the great 
field of romantic tragedy and comedy made human and morally 
vital not only to his own but to succeeding generations. There 
are certain relatively minor forms of the drama, however, in 
which several of his contemporaries are notable interpreters — 
the Comedy of Humours and the Domestic Drama, for instance, — 
while the Romantic Drama, in which he especially excels, passes 
into the hands of weaker men whose imagination was touched 
with decay. Shakespeare, be it remembered, served his appren- 
ticeship with the early Elizabethan group, of which Marlowe was 
the chief figure, and humanized and perfected their ideals; Shake- 
speare's later contemporaries and successors either developed new 
phases of the drama or worked with less native freshness and 
seriousness on the older material. 

Doubtless the popular taste was changing, too, after the seven- 
teenth century was well under way; the buoyancy, the immense 
vitality, the enthusiasm, of the "spacious days" of full national 
consciousness were giving place to a faint weariness. The satiated 
audiences demanded more showy and stimulating plays, and to 
meet the demands of a decadent taste the romantic dramatists, 
Shakespeare's later contemporaries, put forth brilliant but arti- 
ficial plays; some of these plays border on melodrama, and some 
are blood-and-thunder tragedies abounding in unnatural situa- 
tions and lurid incidents, in the midst of which occur saving pas- 
sages of really great poetry. Several plays of Beaumont and 
Fletcher and the tragedies of Webster and Ford belong to this 
class. It is impossible, however, to divide Shakespeare's contem- 
poraries into well-defined groups, inasmuch as each dramatist 
wrote more than one kind of play. Regarding Ben Jonson as 
the greatest, we may consider him first, and then take up as 
representative of the rest Beaumont and Fletcher, Dekker, Hey- 
wood, Middleton, Webster, Massinger, Ford, Shirley. 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



130 




BEN JONSON V*?****^ 



BEN JONSON (1573-1637) 

His Life. — Ben Jonson was born in Westminster, then not a part of London 
proper, in 1573, of Scotch ancestry. His father, who seems to have been of 
gentle blood, died shortly before the birth of his son; his mother married 
a bricklayer a few years afterward, and Ben was brought up by his step- 
father. Hence the tradition that he served an apprenticeship at his step- 
father's trade, which is likely true. He attended the famous Westminster 
School, where he was helped financially and otherwise by William Camden, 
the eminent scholar, at that time one of the masters in the school. 

We next hear of Jonson with the English army in the Netherlands 
fighting against Spain. Returning to London about 1592, he soon married, 
and began a struggle with poverty, doing hack-work for the theaters for 
several years; he became an actor by 1595. It seems unlikely that Jon- 
son ever attended either of the great universities, though later in life he 
received degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge in recognition of his 
classical scholarship and literary work. In spite of untoward circumstances 
Jonson had somehow managed to acquire sound and extensive learning in 



140 ENGLISH LITERATURE 



the classics. In 1598 his first important play, Every Man in his Humour, 
appeared, and his reputation was made. Meanwhile, he had fought a duel 
with a fellow-actor, served a short term in prison in consequence, and 
changed his religious faith from Protestantism to Catholicism, returning 
to the Church of England twelve years later. During the next few years 
following the appearance of his first great comedy (which, by the way, 
was presented by Shakespeare's company of actors, Shakespeare himself 
playing a part) Jonson had a quarrel with two of his fellow-dramatists, 
Marston and Dekker, satirizing them and the contemporary drama un- 
mercifully. 

The great period of Jonson's career lies between the years 1603 and 1625. 
In these years he wrote his three best comedies, his tragedies, and a series 
of Court Masques which were presented with elaborate stag : ng and music 
under the direction of the famous artist, Inigo Jones. These dramatic 
and musical entertainments were in high favor with James I, who rewarded 
Jonson by making him Poet Laureate in 1616. This same year Jonson pub- 
lished a folio edition of his works; two years later he made a visit in Scotland 
to the poet Drummond of Hawthornden, from whom we have an interesting 
book of impressions about Jonson. Some years later Jonson was appointed 
Chronologer of the City, a position which brought him into association with 
a number of the nobility. From 1625 Jonson's dramatic power and influence 
declined; Charles I seems not to have admired him as much as his prede- 
cessor had done; moreover, Jonson had quarreled with Inigo Jones, the 
king's architect. With a considerable circle of literary followers, however, 
who formed the famous "Tribe of Ben," he was supreme dictator and reigned 
at the Devil Tavern as the acknowledged head of English letters. Jonson 
died in 1637 and was buried in Westminster Abbey; the slab over his tomb 
contains the simple inscription, "O Rare Ben Jonson." 

His Personality. — Ben Jonson is personally the most clear-cut, 
commanding figure among the Elizabethans: big in body, rugged 
of feature, brusque and somewhat overbearing in manner, he was 
what in everyday speech we would call "a character." Pictur- 
esque and positive in expression, he made enemies, fought them 
with sword and pen, inspired confidence in his friends, and held 
his own argument by mental and physical forcefulness. Fuller, in 
a well-known comparison, has likened Ben Jonson to a heavy 
Spanish galleon and Shakespeare to a trim and light English man- 
of-war in their wit combats at the Mermaid — Jonson slow and 
clumsy, Shakespeare quick and agile in darting at the galleon 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



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and escaping before the enemy could get ready to strike. Jon- 
son's domineering personality, his arrogance, his egotism, his dog- 
matism, fitted him for the role of literary dictator. His solid 
learning and strong character drew around him a crowd of young 
writers to whom he became a literary father and upon whom he 
made a lasting impression. Although afflicted with disease and 
poverty, he triumphed over both by his indomitable energy and 
invincible will; in these characteristics and particularly in his 
sturdy honesty he resembles Dr.- Samuel Johnson, the literary 
dictator of the eighteenth century. Ben Jonson was the most 
critically learned of the Elizabethan dramatists. 

His Works and Influence. — Ben Jonson's dramatic works con- 
sist of comedies, tragedies, and masques. Besides his first comedy, 
Every Man in his Humour, which was unlike anything before it, 
three other comedies may be mentioned as illustrative of his 
range and method in this division of drama — the Alchemist, Vol- 
pone, and Epicoene, or the Silent Woman. These plays belong to 
the Comedy of Humours: in the Jonsonian sense a "humour" is 
a whim, a foible, a peculiarity of temperament, an idiosyncrasy, 
often so pronounced, indeed, that it becomes a ruling passion. 
Thus, in the Alchemist the principal character, one Subtle, plays 
on the gullibility of a number of people whose hobby is alchemy, 
or the search for the "philosopher's stone" which was supposed 
to turn baser metals into gold; in Volpone, in many respects 
Jonson's most powerful play, the master passion of greed is 
portrayed with such biting satire that the play is in part a 
tragedy. 

Of these comedies the Silent Woman is probably most interesting 
to a modern reader, because it is less technical in its language than 
the others and has more gayety and grace. Morose, a disagreeable 
old egotist with a perfect abhorrence of noise, is persuaded by his 
mischievous nephew to marry a "silent woman" who, besides 
possessing the desirable quality of dumbness, is young and pretty. 
Immediately after the ceremony, however, the bride finds her 
tongue and also her temper, with the result that Morose, now 
almost distracted, agrees to make his scamp of a nephew his heir 



142 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



if he will only get him a divorce. The nephew, having obtained 
this desired promise, discloses to his uncle the fact that the lady 
he has just married is only a boy in disguise. This comedy acts 
well to-day, as those who have seen it staged can testify; it 
abounds in witty speech and amusing situations, and is really 
a comedy of manners. 

These comedies of Jonson deal in a realistic way with the social 
life of his day, and from them we may gain a fair idea of the sur- 
face characteristics of the masses of the Elizabethan people. He 
could not write the romantic comedy of sentiment of the Shake- 
spearean order; Jonson's temperament was colder than that of 
his great contemporary and his minutely classical learning fettered 
his imagination. He was a master of plot structure because he 
usually observed the classical unities of place, time, and subject; 
but most of his plays are rather tedious to the modern reader, 
lacking as they do the essential human quality, the geniality, 
the charity of those of his friend Shakespeare. 

Jonson's tragedies, Sejanus and Catiline, are not great plays, 
though admirably constructed; the lofty tone and heroic characters 
of romantic tragedy were beyond the reach of such a born realist 
as Jonson. In the writing of Masques for Court entertainments he 
was remarkably successful. These spectacles were presented with 
musical and scenic accessories of the most elaborate sort, sur- 
passing in certain particulars the Italian entertainments from 
which the English Masque (known in older times as "disguisings" 
and to-day as "masquerades") was developed. Jonson gave more 
definite dramatic form to the Masque, his masterpiece in this 
species of drama being the splendid Masque of Queens. Jonson 
had a fine lyric gift, and many of his songs and odes and other 
occasional poems compare favorably with those of the best lyric 
poets of the day. He published two important volumes of shorter 
poems, Underwoods and The Forest His poetic tribute "To the 
Memory of my Beloved Master, William Shakespeare," is well 
known, while his "Song to Celia" beginning, "Drink to me only 
with thine eyes," is one of the famous lyrics of our literature. In 
addition to his plays, masques, and poems, Jonson left a volume 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



143 



in prose called Timber, short comments on men and things, in 
which his power as a critic is revealed. 

Ben Jonson's influence may be summed up thus: (1) He exer- 
cised a wholesome restraint in an age when dramatic structure 
was too frequently neglected because of romantic extravagance. 
He was a classicist in the midst of romanticists. As a pioneer 
classicist his influence was felt in the late seventeenth and earlier 
eighteenth century when classicism reached its height in Dryden 
and Pope. (2) He is a forerunner of the brilliant Comedy of 
Manners of the Restoration Period. (3) He had an effect upon 
the Cavalier Poets and other later contemporaries. As a critic 
and literary censor Jonson exerted a profound influence upon 
later dramatists. 

Beaumont and Fletcher. — Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and 
John Fletcher (1579-1625) are always spoken of together as 
forming an unbroken dramatic partnership; and while they did 
collaborate in a number of plays, Fletcher was the sole author 
of many others and joint-author of still others with Massinger 
and probably with Shakespeare. Beaumont came of an old and 
prominent family, was educated at Oxford, studied law but soon 
abandoned it for play-writing. Fletcher was the son of a Bishop 
of London, was educated at Cambridge, and began writing for 
the stage about 1607. Beaumont died in 1616, and Fletcher 
during the remaining nine years of his life wrote alone or with 
other dramatists, having had a' share in at least fifty dramas, 
including the Beaumont collaboration. Both these men began 
their careers by writing comedies of manners, Fletcher's dealing 
with contemporary London life and Beaumont's satirizing and 
burlesquing the current drama. From this they passed to romantic 
comedy and tragedy, by which they are now chiefly known. Two 
plays may be mentioned as typical products of this intellectual 
partnership, Philaster and The Maid's Tragedy. The theme of 
Philaster is somewhat similar to that of Shakespeare's Cymbeline 
and frequently occurs in the romantic drama, namely, the unwar- 
ranted jealousy of a lover and the devotion of a love-lorn maiden 
who in the disguise of a page follows this unworthy lover; the 



144 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



interest in The Maid's Tragedy centers in the conflict in the hero's 
soul between the dictates of personal honor and loyalty to the 
king who has wronged him. 

These plays are well constructed, contain striking situations 
and passages of exquisite poetry, but the action and the characters 
often seem unnatural, and there is in general a manifest striving 
after effect, a worked-up intensity which suggests melodrama. 
Furthermore, the moral tone is low, due to the false psychology 
in action and character and to. the frequent coarseness of the 
language. While the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher show great 
cleverness and versatility in the management of plot and reveal a 
more intimate knowledge of high social life than most dramas of 
the time, they lack the loftiness and the sanity of Shakespeare's, 
and they give evidence of general dramatic decadence. As far 
as we can make out, Beaumont was the more serious, the more 
gifted in constructive power and in the nobility of his verse, of 
the two partners; Fletcher had a lighter and more varied imagina- 
tion and wrote verse of greater lyric sweetness. 

Dekker, Heywood, Middleton. — These three men may be con- 
sidered together as representing in the main the domestic drama 
and comedy of manners, though their plays, particularly those 
of Middleton, cover a wider range, some of them belonging to 
romantic tragedy. Their writing as a whole is more virile and 
breezy, more genuinely Elizabethan, than that of Beaumont and 
Fletcher. 

Of Dekker's life little is knowm: he was born about 1570, spent 
his early years doing hack-work for the theaters, later wrote prose 
pamphlets as well as plays, arranged pageants for the Lord Mayor 
of London, was imprisoned for debt, and came to know well the 
seamy side of London life. His best plays are The Shoemaker's 
Holiday and Old Fortunatus. The first is a comedy of middle-class 
life in which a London shoemaker, who becomes mayor, his wife, 
his daughter Rose, and her lover, disguised as a shoemaker's 
apprentice, are the central figures; the second is a dramatized fairy 
story of the famous wishing-hat and purse of Fortunatus. The 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



145 



Shoemaker's Holiday is one of the merriest, most delightful come- 
dies in our literature. 

Thomas Heywood was educated at Cambridge, and spent his 
life among the actors and playwrights in London, industriously 
writing plays, two hundred and twent}^ of which he says he had 
"at least a main finger in." Only twenty-four of these, however, 
have been preserved, of which A Woman Killed with Kindness 
and The Fair Maid of the W est may be regarded as the best. A 
Woman Killed with Kindness is a domestic drama about an erring 
and repentant wife who pines away and dies, reconciled on her 
deathbed to her magnanimous husband: a play of considerable 
tenderness and quiet beauty in spite of a few manifestly unreal 
situations. The Fair Maid of the West is a dashing, breezy sea- 
drama, full of action, the talk of sailors, fights and sights in strange 
lands, the atmosphere of Elizabethan voyages of discovery and 
heroism. Heywood excelled in the drama of simple domestic life 
and in realistic romance. 

Thomas Middleton (1570-1627), described by himself as a 
"gentleman," was trained for the law, but, like many other young 
men of the day, soon turned to playwriting, in which his knowledge 
of law courts stood him in good stead. He wrote comedies and 
tragedies, realistic and romantic, alone and in collaboration. 
Among his comedies A Trick to Catch the Old One is certainly the 
most readable to-day; it is the story of how an impecunious nephew 
outwitted his rich uncle and became his heir by the help of a 
rumor of an intended marriage with a rich widow. Middleton's 
best tragedy is The Changeling, in which there is a good deal of 
blood-and-thunder, after the order of the older "tragedies of 
blood," relieved by stretches of really fine poetry. Middleton is 
an unequal writer, reminding us of Shakespeare ever and anon, 
and then degenerating into sensationalism. 

John Webster. — In the judgment of all competent students of 
the Elizabethan Drama John Webster, about whom personally 
little or nothing is certainly known, ranks not far below Shake- 
speare in power of imaginative splendor. His genius is narrow 
but wonderfully intense. Webster's greatest play is The Duchess 



146 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



of Malfi, the story of the sufferings and murder of a high-born 
lady who married a man of lower rank and for that offense was 
tortured to death by her inhuman brothers. It is the last con- 
spicuous example of the Elizabethan "tragedy of blood" which 
began with Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. The Duchess of Malfi is full 
of gloomy horrors, such as wax figures representing the dead, 
masked assassins, clammy hands of death, and haunted rooms. 
Webster's imagination worked with tortuous intrigues and revenges 
befitting the dark Italian subjects which he chose for his tragedies. 
All this somber tangle of villainy is lighted up by the gracious 
and dignified figure of the Duchess, over whose dead body her 
brother, Duke Ferdinand, horror-stricken at his own action and 
at last impressed with her innocence and beauty, utters the 
famous line: 

Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young. 

Striking passages here and there in this play seem to be reminis- 
cent of Shakespeare, reaching a lofty height of sustained passion. 

Massinger, Ford, Shirley. — In the plays of these three men the 
splendid Elizabethan Drama comes to an end and the curtain 
falls. Phillip Massinger wrote both comedy and tragedy of more 
or less artificial and overstrained nature, but one comedy, A New 
Way to Pay Old Debts, achieved a deserved popularity which it 
has never wholly lost; it has given to our literature a classic figure 
in Sir Giles Overreach. John Ford had a morbid imagination, 
sought for abnormal situations, and strove to please the taste of 
a jaded public. The structure of his plays is good, for he was a 
leisurely writer, and his blank verse is excellent; it is the essential 
unreality of his dramas which marks them as belonging to the 
twilight hours of a glorious day. The best of them is The Broken 
Heart; it was heart failure, indeed, that the once virile Elizabethan 
Drama was afflicted with. Then came James Shirley, the last 
of the long procession, with his labored imitative tragedy, without 
freshness, correct enough in literary quality but wanting in action 
and lifelike characters. Shirley wrote one interesting comedy, 
Hyde Park, the realistic prose of which, reflecting the fashionable 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



147 



talk of London society, resembles that of the later brilliant but 
corrupt Restoration Comedy of Manners. 

The Closing of the Theaters (1642).— During the fifty or sixty 
years extending from Marlowe to Shirley the Drama had flourished 
with unexampled vigor and beauty, had grown more and more 
artificial, and had finally played itself out in dissipation and dirt. 
It had passed from the parlor to the gutter, and was no longer 
respectable; at least, so thought the Puritans, who were in power 
now, and they were right in condemning the flippant, trashy, and 
decadent plays presented at the public theaters. Accordingly, 
in 1642 by an act of Parliament the theaters were closed, and not 
until the Restoration in 1660 were they opened again. 

III. ELIZABETHAN PROSE 

Although the Elizabethan Age was preeminently a time of 
poetic utterance in drama and lyric, it gave to the world some 
notable prose as well. Prose is always slower than poetry in its 
development toward a clear and artistic form, and the prose of 
this period, particularly of the earlier part, shows little of the 
restraint and formal accuracy of our modern prose. This is a 
period of origins in our prose literature, of experiments toward 
a more settled form; to us, therefore, the earliest Elizabethan 
prose writings are curiosities of literature rather than genuine 
classics. This is true of the prose of John Lyly in Euphues, 
already referred to, with its artificial balancing of phrases and its 
affected style; it is true in a less degree of Sidney's Arcadia, with 
its long sentences and tangled phrases and its essentially poetic 
style; it is true to a great extent in Greene's, Nash's, and Lodge's 
romances. It would not be desirable in so brief a work as this to 
attempt to consider these earlier prose experiments in our litera- 
ture: it will be sufficient for our purposes to indicate the great 
variety of subject matter in Elizabethan Prose and then to take 
up several representatives of the best prose of the period. 

Most of the Elizabethan prose works may be included under 
the following heads: (1) Critical and Satirical, as Sidney's Apology 



us 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 




SIR WALTER RALEIGH 



for Poesie and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy; (2) Romances, 
as Sidney's Arcadia and Lodge's Rosalind; (3) Religious, as 
Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity; (4) Historical and Philosophical, 
as Sir Walter Raleigh's and Francis Bacon's; (5) Travels and 
Translations, as Richard Hakluyt's Voyages and Discoveries, 
North's Plutarch, and the Authorized Version of the Bible. From 
this very condensed list we may choose for brief consideration 
Raleigh, Hooker, Bacon, and the King James Bible. 

Raleigh. — Next to Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Raleigh is the 
most romantic figure in the Elizabethan Age, and like Sidney he 
was only incidentally a man of letters. Raleigh wrote verses, as 
did all accomplished courtiers, but his right to a place in English 
literature depends more upon certain eloquent prose passages in 
his History of the World than upon his verses. This large work he 
composed during his long imprisonment in the Tower of London 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



149 



ending with his execution in 1618. It was an ambitious under- 
taking, for Raleigh began at the creation and on the way down to- 
ward modern times discussed law, mythology, theology, magic, 
war, and the ideal form of government; bu _s 6 ci no further than 
130 B. C. The book has of course no value as history and is inter- 
esting to-day only because parts of it reveal the writer's opinions 
and personality; indeed, one cannot but regret that Sir Walter 
did not spend those years in writing a book of recollections. 
Whenever he digresses from his narrative of events into a discus- 
sion of the characters of great men, his writing becomes literature; 
or when he touches on matters of personal experience, such as 
wars and conquests, the sentences become shorter and clearer, the 
style grows impassioned, and the movement rhythmical. No 
better example of this heightened and musical prose of the great 
passages in his History of the World could be found than the oft- 
quoted closing apostrophe to Death: 

O eloquent, just and mighty death! Whom none could adviss, thou hast 
persuaded! What none have dared, thou hast done! And whom all the 
world has flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised! 
Thou hast drawn together all the far-fetched greatness, all the pride, cruelty 
and ambition of men; and covered it all over with these two narrow words: 
Hie jacet. 

Hooker. — Richard Hooker (1554-1600) was a theologian and 
philosopher, and the author of a work on Church government, the 
Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. Hooker was educated at Oxford, 
taught there awhile, and spent the rest of his life, except for several 
years of preaching in London, in a quiet country parish. He was 
of shy, retiring nature, with the scholar's dislike of worldly struggle 
and turmoil, preferring to live where he could "see God's blessings 
spring out of the earth and be free from noise. " In his country 
retreat he composed his Ecclesiastical Polity, the fundamental 
idea of which is "the unity and all-embracing character of law 
as the manifestation of the divine order of the universe." It is 
judicial in tone, comprehensive in scope, and liberal in thought; 
the language is stately and sonorous, moving along in periods 



150 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



of great dignity and solemnity. English prose before Hooker had 
no such stateliness or sweep; because of its eloquence, its spacious- 
ness, and its clearness and depth of thought, the Ecclesiastical 
Polity deserves to be remembered as one of our great prose master- 
pieces. These admirable sentences, for example, show Hooker's 
large and just spirit: 

But with any partial eye to respect ourselves, and by cunning to make 
those things seem the truest which are the fittest to serve our purpose, is 
a thing which we neither like nor mean to follow. Wherefore that which we 
take to be generally true concerning the mutability of laws, the same we 
have plainly delivered, as being persuaded of nothing more than we are of 
this, that whether it be in matter of speculation of or practice, no untruth 
can possibly avail the patron and defender long, and that things most truly 
are likewise most behovefully spoken. 

No more eloquent words about the majesty of law were ever 
written than those at the end of the first book of the Ecclesiastical 
Polity: 

Of law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom 
of God, her voice the harmony of the world, all things in heaven and earth 
do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not 
exempted from her power, both angels and men and creatures of what con- 
dition soever though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform 
consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy. 

FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626) 

His Life. — Bacon was born in London, in 1561. His father was Sir Nicho- 
las Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, one of the leading advisers of the 
queen, while his uncle by marriage was Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth's great 
minister. Thus it will be seen that Francis Bacon began life amid the most 
favorable surroundings. At twelve years of age he was ready for college 
and was accordingly sent along with his older brother to Cambridge, where 
he entered Trinity College. Here he spent three years and here he first 
met Queen Elizabeth, who playfully called him her "little Lord Keeper. " 
At Cambridge Bacon became dissatisfied with the philosophy of Aristotle 
as being unproductive of definite and practical results. After leaving Cam- 
bridge he spent two or three years in France attached to the English 
embassy; upon his return he continued the study of law and by 1582 was 
ready for practice. A few years later he entered politics, was elected to 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



151 



Parliament, and was thereafter steadily promoted from one official position 
to another, becoming in turn Solicitor General, Attorney General, Lord 
Keeper, and finally Lord Chancellor, with the title of Viscount St. Albans. 
Meanwhile, Bacon had continued his studies in philosophy, had published 
several works, including his Essays, and had taken part in the prosecution 
of the powerful Earl of Essex, his friend and liberal benefactor, who had lost 
the queen's favor and been executed in 1601. Bacon's elaborate defense 
of the prominent part he took in the trial did not serve to remove the impres- 
sion that he had shown base ingratitude to a former friend; in such a crisis 
Bacon preferred to keep the favor of the queen rather than sacrifice himself 
for a friend. 

Under Elizabeth's successor, James I, Bacon reached the height of his 
fame: he stood high in the king's favor, he had triumphed over his enemies, 
he was an influential writer, he was a powerful statesman at the head of the 
House of Lords. Suddenly, almost without warning, he fell from official 
prosperity into deep disgrace; for in 1621 a committee of Parliament brought 
against him charges of corruption in office to the effect that he had accepted 
bribes from suitors in court. Bacon wrote to the king defending himself 
against the charges, but when pressed by his accusers he made full confes- 
sion, beseeching his judges "to be merciful to a broken reed." He was 
sentenced topay an enormous fine and sent to prison ; the king remitted the fine 
and soon caused him to be released from prison, and he went forth a disgraced 
and ruined man. The remaining five years of his life he spent in retirement 
and devoted them to study and writing. Bacon died in 1626 as the result, 
it is said, of a cold caught from making an experiment in regard to the anti- 
septic properties of snow on a freshly killed fowl. He was literally a victim 
to that inductive scientific method of which he was the brilliant pioneer. 

In Lord Bacon there were two distinct men — one the scholar and philoso- 
pher who "had taken all knowledge to be his province," ambitious to devote 
his luminous intellect to the enlightenment of mankind; the other the worldly 
seeker after preferment, hanging on princes' favors, living extravagantly, 
and finally violating his oath of office. With his rare mental endowments 
there was combined a singular bluntness of moral perception. What com- 
pels our admiration is not Bacon's character but his majestic intellect and 
his patient devotion to pure thought. In the introduction to one of his 
works he speaks of himself "as having a mind nimble and versatile enough 
to catch the resemblances of things and at the same time steady enough to 
fix and distinguish their subtler differences; as being gifted by nature with 
desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, 
readiness to reconsider, carefulness to dispose and set in order." These 
words fitly describe Bacon the scholar and thinker and reveal the scientific 
temper of his mind. 



152 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



His Works and His Contribution to Literature. — The most 

important of Bacon's works are the Advancement of Learning, 
the Novum Organum, and the Essays. The Advancement of 
Learning (1605) and the Novum Organum (1620) were written 
in Latin, since Bacon was doubtful about the permanency of the 
English language and since Latin was preeminently the language 
of scholars. In the first of these works he discusses the vast possi- 
bilities of knowledge, arguing in a clear, systematic manner and 
with abundant illustrations for the dignity of learning; in the 
second, he proposes a new method for the discovery and promotion 
of knowledge. Bacon early realized the unfruitfulness of the 
deductive, or purely speculative, methods of the older philosophers 
derived from Aristotle; he advocated the patient study of the 
facts of nature by careful experiment, such a method of study as 
we find employed in all scientific laboratories to-day. From this 
attention to details he argued that ultimately the investigator 
might arrive at the discovery of general laws — such was the begin- 
ning of the inductive method of reasoning on which all modern 
science is based. Bacon is therefore, in a sense, the forerunner of 
Newton, Huxley, Darwin, and other great scientists, though he 
was not himself a practical scientist but an advanced thinker, 
stimulating others and showing them the way. 

To literature, however, Bacon's chief contribution is his volume 
of fifty-eight Essays published in full in 1625, the first two editions, 
issued in 1597 and 1612 respectively, containing only a part of 
the present number. The essays are on a variety of subjects — 
Studies, Truth, Riches, Friendship, Travel, Gardens, Ambition — ■ 
treated as a rule in the spirit of worldly wisdom. By an "essay" 
Bacon meant a trial at a subject, a collection of suggestive com- 
ments rather than a finished discussion — a mere skeleton as com- 
pared, for instance, with a modern essay, which is really a trea- 
tise. Bacon's essays remind one of a wise man's jottings in his 
notebook to be used later as headings for the divisions of an ex- 
tended discourse. The sentences are short and pithy, packed full 
of wisdom, secular proverbs, the sagacious observations of an 
experienced and profound political philosopher. Bacon called his 



THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 



153 



essays "dispersed meditations," and he intended them to be 
practical enough to "come home to men's business and bosoms." 
These sententious comments on things political and moral stick 
in the memory; they have helped to enforce many a lesson in 
political and social ethics; they are among the most quotable 
prose utterances in our literature. Such statements as these go 
straight to the heart of the matter: "Virtue is like a rich stone, best 
plain set"; "Revenge is a kind of wild justice"; "God Almighty 
first planted a garden"; "Suspicions among thoughts are like bats 
among birds"; "A crowd is not company, and faces are but a 
gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is 
no love." Much of the familiar essay on Studies has passed into 
the common fund of literary quotation. Bacon contributed greatly 
to the clearness and directness of English prose through these 
direct, short, and crisp sentences, which are in pleasing contrast 
to the long, involved Latinistic sentences common among writers 
in his day. 

Besides the works already mentioned, Bacon wrote the Wisdom 
of the Ancients, a somewhat fanciful work interpreting classic 
mythology; the New Atlantis, in the spirit of More's Utopia; 
the History of Henry VII, an admirable piece of historical writing; 
and a metrical version of the Psalms which proves that Bacon was 
no poet. His essays alone are of vital interest to-day. 

The King James Bible. — In 1611 was published the Authorized, 
or King James, Version of the Bible, a great monument of English 
prose. Over forty of the most eminent scholars of England, duly 
appointed by the king, united to produce a standard translation 
of the Bible, and after several years of diligent labor, gave to the 
world this now famous version. Although translating from the 
original languages, they followed previous versions more or less 
closely, so that from Wyclif on through Tyndale to the 1611 
version the continuity and influence of the English Bible is vir- 
tually unbroken. The purpose of the translators was to render 
the Bible into popular and not literary English, so that the people 
at large might gladly read and easily understand it; and by hitting 
upon the racy, idiomatic turns of the best colloquial speech they 



154 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



all unconsciously produced a literary classic. The strong, simple, 
concrete words of our English Bible together with the splendid 
rhythm of its impassioned prose and the milder cadence of its 
narratives have made it a masterpiece of style and diction, to 
which all important English writers since have been debtors. 
From Milton and Bunyan to Tennyson and Ruskin, the makers 
of our modern English bear witness to the harmony, simplicity, 
and energy of the language of the King James Bible. An extract 
from the first ' 'authorized edition" is given below: 



creates the 
$eatteti,autttJie 
eattt>* 
% %xto titt 

out fwrn , ata> 

neue was $pou 
tl)t face of tDe oeepe : am tfte £>pfttt 
of (Boa mooueo bpou tDe face of tUe 
waters 




THE ELIZABETHAN AGE 
THE PERIOD IN OUTLINE (1558-1625) 



155 



LITERATURE 

I. Non-Dramatic Poetry 
Edmund Spenser (1552-1599): 

Shepherd's Calendar (1579), 

Faerie Queene, etc. 
Sir Philip Sidney and the Sonneteers 
Chapman's Translation of Homer 

(1611) 
Miscellaneous Lyrics 

II. The Drama 

First Regular Comedy, Ralph 

Roister Doister, 1553 
First Regular Tragedy, Gorboduc, 

about 1562 
Shakespeare's Predecessors: Peele, 

Greene, Lyly, Kyd 
Christopher Marlowe: Tambur- 
laine, Faustus, Jew of Malta, 
Edward II 
First Public Theater, 1576 
William Shakespeare (1564-1616): 
Four Periods: "Apprentice- 
ship" (1590-95), "Mastery" 
(1595-1600), "Tragic Gloom" 
(1600-08), "Serenity" (1608-12) 
First Folio Edition of Shake- 
speare's Plays, 1623 
Ben Jonson (1573-1637) 
Closing of the Theaters, 1642 

III. Prose 

Lyly's Euphues, 1579 
Sidney's Arcadia and Apology for 
Poesie 

Raleigh's History of the World, 
1614 

Bacon's Essays, 1625 
King James ("Authorized Ver- 
sion") Bible, 1611 



HISTORY 
Reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603 



Reign of James I, 1603-1625 



Drake sails around the World, 
1577-80 



Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 
1588 



Act of Parliament against extreme 
Puritans ("Separatists"), 1593. 



Settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, 
1607 



Pilgrims land at Plymouth, Mass., 
1620 



Flood Tide of the Renaissance; Vitality of the Age Shown in Discovery and 
Adventure; National Enthusiasm; Supremacy of the Drama in Literature 



156 ENGLISH LITERATURE 



SOME USEFUL BOOKS 

Historical. — Creighton's The Age of Elizabeth, Harrison's Elizabethan 
England, Goadby's The England of Shakespeare, Winter's Shakespeare's 
England, Stephenson's The Elizabethan People (Holt), Stephenson's Shake- 
speare's London (Holt), Shakespeare's London (Dutton), Froude's History 
of England (chapters on Mary Queen of Scots and the Armada). 

Literary. — Seccombe & Allen's The Age of Shakespeare (Macmillan), 
Saintsbury's Elizabethan Literature (Macmillan), S. Lee's Great English- 
men of the Sixteenth Century (Scribners), Lives of Spenser, Sidney, Shake- 
speare, Bacon, in "English Men of Letters" Series, Edwards' Life of Raleigh 
(Macmillan), Gosse's Life of Raleigh ("English Worthies"). 

The Drama. — Manly's Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama (Ginn), 
Pollard's English Miracle Plays (Clarendon Press), Miracle and Morality 
Plays ("Everyman's Library"), Gayley's Representative English Come- 
dies (Macmillan), Neilson's Chief Elizabethan Dramatists (Houghton), 
Thayer's Best Elizabethan Plays (Ginn), "Mermaid Series" of Elizabe- 
than Dramatists (Scribners), Schelling's Elizabethan Drama, Brooke's 
The Tudor Drama, Boas' Shakespeare and his Predecessors, Lamb's Speci- 
mens of English Dramatic Poets, Ward's History of English Dramatic 
Literature, Albright's The Elizabethan Stage. 

Shakespeare. — Lee's Life of Shakespeare (Macmillan), Halliwell-Phillipps , 
Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, Dowden's Shakspere — his Mind and 
Art, Baker's The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist, Moulton's 
Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, Dowden's Shakspere Primer (American 
Book Co.), MacCracken's Introduction to Shakespeare (Macmillan), Luce's 
Handbook to Shakespeare's Works (Macmillan), Mabie's Shakespeare — 
Poet, Dramatist, and Man. — The Rolfe, Arden, Temple, and revised Hudson 
editions of single plays are excellent for class study. 



CHAPTER SIX 



THE PURITAN PERIOD 
1625-1660 

THE AGE OF MILTON 

The Passing of the Elizabethans. — Elizabeth died in 1603, but 
the vitalizing forces of the great age which bears her name did 
not begin to wane until well on within the reign of her successor, 
James I. By the end of his reign in 1625 the best work of the 
Elizabethan writers is done and signs of changing ideals are evi- 
dent: the high noon of the Renaissance is past. We have seen 
how the queen was the embodiment of the spirit of her age, uni- 
fying the nation in patriotic pride, appealing to the popular 
imagination, and imparting courage and hope. We have learned 
how the literature, particularly the drama, reflected the joy and 
splendor, the youthful buoyancy of the national life, making 
reality take on the colors of romance. Elizabethan England was 
a united and a merry England. Under James things were differ- 
ent: personally he was not popular, and politically he had such 
exalted views about the divine rights of kings that he could not 
get along with Parliament. 

James's successor, Charles I, was still more extreme in his 
notions about divine rights, and as a result of his disregard of 
the rights of the people the nation was plunged into civil war, 
the king was beheaded, Cromwell became Protector, and the 
Puritans succeeded the Royalists in political control. The reign 
of Elizabeth had been one of peace and prosperity; the reigns of 
her successors were full of confusion, and the literature of the 
period reflects this unrest. W r e must not suppose, however, that 
there is any clear line of demarcation between the periods; they 

[157] 



158 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



overlap, the Elizabethan gradually giving place to a sterner, less 
romantic age. Several of the dramatists who were brought up in 
the "spacious days" lived on into these changed times, notably 
Ben Jonson, who died in 1637, the same year in which Milton's 
"Lycidas" appeared; but the playwright's occupation was gone, 
so fierce had grown the war of factions in Church and State. The 
nation, busied with more serious concerns, was in no mood for 
theatrical performances; civil strife promised real tragedy on a 
vaster stage; the clamorous protests of the Puritans silenced the 
makers of plays and jolly tavern songs. The day of the artificial 
lyric and the somber epic was at hand. 

Puritanism.— Under Henry VIII England, it will be remem- 
bered, had become a Protestant country, partly for political 
reasons and partly as a result of the general influence of the great 
Protestant Reformation which began in Germany. There were 
many English Protestants, however, who were not satisfied with 
certain forms of worship and certain doctrines in the Church of 
England, regarding them as still too much like those of the Church 
of Rome. These people wished to purify the Church of such prac- 
tices as, in their opinion, were not warranted by the teachings of 
the Bible. Moreover, with the Bible as their textbook, they were 
deeply interested in individual purity and individual salvation. 
These persons came to be known as Puritans. Puritanism, 
therefore, was in its beginnings a plea for greater individual 
righteousness on the one hand, and a protest against the formal- 
ism of the Church and the tyranny of church government on the 
other. 

There were of course varying degrees of Puritanism, all the way 
from the extreme views held by those who actually separated them- 
selves from the Established Church to the more cultured and toler- 
ant attitude of those who remained in the Church and who wished 
to purify it from within. The extreme Puritan, from whom the 
popular conception of Puritanism has been derived, was austere 
and forbidding in manner, sanctimonious in speech, hostile to 
amusements,— an eccentric and somber individual, indeed, whose 
eyes were fixed on another world, who disapproved of dancing 



THE PURITAN PERIOD 



159 



and games, and who talked in Scriptural terms and sang psalms. 
This type of Puritan is not to be thought of as representing all 
of Puritanism; there were many moderate Puritans who did not 
leave the Church of England, who loved literature, and who showed 
their 'Puritanism by their insistence on personal righteousness 
and their advocacy of civil and religious liberty. As a whole, 
then, Puritanism was not so much a sect as an attitude of mind; 
toward liberal culture and intellectual freedom this attitude was 
one of narrowness, and in consequence vigorous artistic activity 
was repressed and the national life became hard and dry. By 
way of compensation, however, the nation was ennobled by the 
mighty struggle for civil and religious liberty. Freedom of con- 
science was gained even though literature did suffer a temporary 
eclipse. 

Puritan and Cavalier. — The Puritans were the reformers, and 
the Cavaliers, or Royalists, were the conservatives. From a 
religious struggle the contest grew into a political one for posses- 
sion of the government. The Puritans were extreme Protestants: 
some fled to Holland and America, where they set up a more 
democratic form of church polity; the great majority remained 
in England and sought to purify the Established Church, society, 
and politics. They opposed the king, finally got rid of him after 
much hard fighting in the field and in Parliament, and established 
the Commonwealth, which lasted until 1660. The leader and 
typical man of action among the Puritans was Oliver Cromwell; 
in literature they were most conspicuously represented by John 
Milton and John Bunyan, though Milton, as we shall see, was part 
Cavalier. The typical Puritan, as already stated, was stern, 
condemning the graces and gayeties of life, popular sports and 
games, as little less than mere vanities and vexations of the spirit. 
Because of their close-cropped hair the Puritans were nicknamed 
"Roundheads" in contradistinction to the Cavaliers who wore 
long hair falling down upon their shoulders. The Cavaliers 
stood for the established order: they were followers of the king 
and tolerant adherents of the Established Church; they enjoyed 
^the world and the social refinements of life, its graces and pleas- 



160 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



ures, its art and literature, and were in general more cultured and 
accomplished than their austere fellow countrymen. 

In those disturbed times many of these Cavaliers came to 
America and settled in Virginia and adjacent regions along the 
Atlantic seaboard, while the Puritans settled in Massachusetts 
and neighboring parts of New England. It would be a mistake, 
however, to draw a rigid line between Puritan and Cavalier, for 
between the extremists in both parties there were multitudes of 
solid Englishmen who combined within themselves characteristics 
of both. Although Puritan influence was predominant between 
1625 and 1660, probably not more than half of the people of Eng- 
land during those years were professedly Puritans. In our study 
of the literature of the period we shall see time and again a blend- 
ing of the traits of the men of these two parties. 

I. POETRY OF THE PURITAN PERIOD 

It is not an easy task to classify the poets of the Puritan Period, 
so many are the subjects on which they wrote and so varied the 
treatment. Some of the later Elizabethan dramatists were still 
living in the earlier and even middle years of the period, but 
dramatic poetry naturally excited little interest in an age largely 
given to religious and political controversy and therefore essen- 
tially hostile to the drama. It accordingly seems preferable to 
consider the dramatists who were still writing in the reign of 
Charles I as really belonging to the preceding age — the last of 
the Elizabethans — rather than to assign them to a period of 
distinctly non-dramatic temper. Roughly speaking the poetry 
of the Puritan Period may be divided into Lyric and Epic; John 
Milton, who wrote both kinds, is the one supreme poet; the minor 
poets were for the most part lyrists. For greater convenience 
we may group these minor singers under three heads: (1) The 
Spenserians, or imitators of Edmund Spenser; (2) The Meta- 
physical, or Fantastic Poets; (3) The Cavalier, or Royalist Poets. 

The Spenserian Poets. — There is a small group of poets belong- 
ing to the reigns of James I and Charles I whose verse in form 



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and content is suggestive of that of Edmund Spenser. These 
poets may be regarded as transitional, — connecting links between 
the non-dramatic poets of the Elizabethan Age and the less 
spontaneous singers of more artificial days when political and 
religious controversy chilled the genial current of English song. 
On the one hand, they sound the pastoral note of Spenser, and 
on the other, the dominant religious note of Puritanism. The 
foremost of these poets are Giles and Phineas Fletcher (cousins 
of the dramatist, John Fletcher), Browne, Drummond, and 
Wither. 

The two brothers GILES and PHINEAS FLETCHER belonged to 
a poetic family; they were educated at Cambridge, became clergy- 
men in the Established Church, and spent their lives in quiet 
parishes where they had leisure for reading and writing. Giles 
Fletcher's best work is Christ's Victory and Triumph,- an epic 
poem in four parts in which the Spenserian stanza, modified by 
the omission of the seventh line, is used. The language and 
imagery of this poem reveal a strong Spenserian influence, though 
Fletcher at times attains a higher majesty and earnestness than 
we find in The Faerie Queene. Christ's Victory and Triumph is 
one of the most important religious poems in our literature before 
Milton; indeed, its influence upon Milton was considerable, for 
he studied it closely and made some use of certain passages from 
it in his Paradise Regained. Phineas Fletcher's principal work is 
The Purple Island. The name suggests a romantic spot far away 
in "perilous seas forlorn," but turns out to be the body of man 
(Isle of Man) anatomically and spiritually considered, with much 
ingenious allegory and fantastic imagery after the manner of 
Spenser. 

WILLIAM BROWNE is the author of Britannia's Pastorals, a poem 
containing many beautiful descriptions of natural scenery, though 
much of the loose narrative has the conventional pastoral setting 
with nymphs and Arcadian shepherds as characters. Browne 
lived in Devonshire, one of the most charming parts of rural Eng- 
land, and his poetry sometimes reflects the sights and sounds of 
that delightful countryside. 



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WILLIAM DRUMMOND, of Hawthornden, scholar and re- 
cluse, lived a meditative life of retirement on his estate in Scotland, 
where Ben Jonson made him a famous visit. Drummond wrote 
Sonnets and Hymns of great artistic excellence, of which his 
Sonnet to the Nightingale is perhaps the best. 

GEORGE WITHER is hard to classify: he was born in 1588 and 
died in 1667, and thus, it will be noted, saw the glory and decadence 
of the Elizabethans, the triumph of the Puritans, and the Resto- 
ration of the Royalists. He had a varied experience — at first a 
Royalist, then a Puritan, satirizing political and religious abuses, 
suffering in prison, and dying obscure and neglected. His work is 
a large body of quite uneven verse, much of it commonplace, 
parts of it noble in spirit and exquisite in finish. His secular 
lyrics combine Elizabethan spontaneity and Cavalier grace, 
while his religious hymns reveal the serious Puritan. The best 
known of Wither's lyrics is that of which the following is the 
first stanza: 

Shall I, wasting in despair, 

Die, because a woman's fair? 

Or make pale my cheeks with care, 

'Cause another's rosy are? 

Be she fairer than the day, 

Or the flowery meads in May! 

If she be not so to me, 

What care I how fair she be? 

The Metaphysical Poets. — To another group of poets in this 
period, quite different in manner from those just considered, the 
term "metaphysical' ' was applied by Dr. Johnson because in 
their poetry they departed from the ordinary or natural mode 
of thought and expression, preferring abstruse philosophical 
language to the simple and direct. It would be more accurate 
to call them "fantastic," as Milton did, inasmuch as they delighted 
in strained and far-fetched comparisons, fanciful word-play, and 
sometimes in mere prettiness of phrase, caring more for eccen- 
tricity of expression than genuineness of feeling. These clever 
turns of phrase and ingenious fancies are called "conceits"; and 



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while they are often very striking, and sometimes even brilliant, 
they usually give to poetry an air of artificiality. The prevalence 
of "conceits" in poetry at this time reminds us of the popularity 
of that fantastic fashion in Elizabethan prose known as Euphu- 
ism. 1 The name "Metaphysical Poets" is sometimes applied to 
all lyric writers of the Puritan Period; it seems more natural, 
however, to include under this head only those whose verse is 
more distinctively philosophical and religious in tone, though it 
must be clearly understood that no rigid line can be drawn be- 
tween the so-called Metaphysical Poets and the Cavalier Poets. 
The principal Metaphysical Poets are Donne, Herbert, Crashaw, 
Vaughan, Marvell, Cowley, Waller. 

John Donne. — One of the most original, versatile, vigorous, 
and whimsical of English poets was John Donne, who was born 
in London in 1573. Donne's father, a wealthy merchant, died 
when the future poet was a mere child, and he was left to the care 
of a devout Catholic mother. He early displayed a restless mental 
energy which led him into the study of a wide range of subjects; 
this study he continued with marked success at both Oxford and 
Cambridge. Then the Elizabethan passion for exploration 
seized him and he traveled in France, Italy, and Spain, and even 
to the Azores, part of the time with the army and at other times 
alone. He had studied science, law, and theology, giving most 
of his time to law. Returning to London, he made a clandestine 
marriage, was in serious financial straits, and finally, since political 
and other preferment had failed him, entered the ministry of the 
Established Church, having some time before virtually renounced 
the Catholic faith of his earlier youth. Donne was forty-two 
when he entered the Church; in six years he became Dean of St. 
Paul's, holding this position nine or ten years until his death in 
1631, and was regarded as the foremost preacher of England. 
From a somewhat wild and irregular youth and early manhood 
Donne had so far advanced in public esteem that at his death he 
was reverenced almost as a saint. His early life was Elizabethan 



1 See footnote, page 112. 



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in its restless ambitions, but into his later years there stole the 
melancholy gloom of Puritanism. 

Donne left a large body of verse, none of which was published 
until after his death, though much of it had circulated in manu- 
script during his lifetime among his admiring friends. In his 
poetry Donne broke away from the subjects and methods of the 
Elizabethans; there are no stock classic divinities, shepherds, 
nymphs, and Arcadian landscapes, as in Spenser; there is little 
regard for sweet-sounding lines and pleasing imagery. Donne 
drew his illustrations from science, law, theology, and metaphysics, 
subjects in which he had a keen personal interest. The Eliza- 
bethans had ransacked creation for the material of their verse; 
Donne, on the contrary, limited himself to his own experience 
for the inspiration and matter of his song. He wrote satires, elegies, 
love songs, religious poems, and various other kinds which defy 
classification. Donne is almost a great poet: he has vigor, origi- 
nality, deep thought at times, and occasionally he rises into the 
sublime; but he lacks warmth of feeling, he is sometimes almost 
hopelessly obscure, he is given to overstrained figures, or "con- 
ceits," and to such whimsical tricks of meter that too often it is 
well-nigh impossible to keep track of the thought. Here, for 
instance, is his famous "conceit" of two lovers' souls, which is 
one of his best: 

If they be two, they are two so 

As stiff twin compasses are two; 
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show 

To move, but doth, if th* other do. 

And though it in the centre sit, 

Yet when the other far doth roam, 
It leans and hearkens after it, 
And grows erect as that comes home. 

The influence of the poetry of Donne upon that of his immediate 
successors was very marked; indeed, for a hundred years Donne 
was admired and imitated, Dryden and Pope being the most 
prominent among those indebted to him. Even to-day, when 



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Donne is little known except to scholars and lovers of the curious 
and quaint, a patient reading of his poems will arouse in one 
something of the admiration which his contemporaries felt for an 
original genius whose virile thought is, unhappily, oftentimes 
obscured in a cloud of fantastic imagery. 

George Herbert. — More devotional in spirit and simpler in 
expression than Donne was George Herbert (1593-1633), serene 
and tranquil poet of genuine religious emotion. Born in Wales of 
aristocratic lineage, George Herbert was brought up by a devout 
and cultured mother, who sent him first to Westminster School, 
London, and then to Cambridge. He was educated for a career 
at court, but after waiting some years in vain for promised pre- 
ferment, he entered the Church and devoted the rest of his 
life to religious service and deep meditation. In his little country 
parish, shut out from the troublous agitations of the larger 
world, Herbert communed with nature and with God, leaving a 
manuscript of poems in which, according to his own words, was 
to be found "a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have 
passed betwixt God and my own soul." But the conflicts are not 
in the poems — all is calm and peaceful there. Herbert's work is 
arranged and named under the similitude of a church, or sacred 
temple, a poem or group of poems being assigned to parts of the 
building — the church porch, altar, windows, floor, — to the sacra- 
ments, religious festivals, abstract moral virtues, and the like. 
The volume of his poems, called collectively The Temple, is an 
interesting medley of moral and religious reflections expressed 
in the form of wise precepts, quaint conceits, and solemn hymns. 
Here are several precepts taken from the "Church Porch:" 

Envy not greatness; for thou makest thereby 
Thyself the worse, and so the distance greater- 

Be calm in arguing: for fierceness makes 
Error a fault, and truth discourtesy. 

Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie; 

A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby. 

By all means use sometimes to be alone; 
Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear. 



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The poem of Herbert's most frequently quoted to-day is the one 
beginning- 
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
The bridal of the earth and sky! 

His verse has a subdued musical quality quite in contrast to 
the crabbed harshness of much of the verse of his master Donne, 
but Herbert is Donne's faithful disciple in the matter of conceit- 
making. As a whole, the poetry of Herbert breathes the joyous 
contentment of a serene and beautiful spirit, free from passion 
and sincerely concerned with the daily duties of religious service. 

Herbert's most noteworthy disciple is HENRY VATJGHAN, a 
country physician of Wales, who saw the Divine in nature and 
in childhood as well as in the forms of religion. There are pas- 
sages in the poem s of Vaughan which suggest Wordsworth. 

Crashaw, Cowley, Waller. — Another disciple of Herbert was 
Richard Crashaw (1613-1650), who is also akin to Donne in his 
fondness for ingenious conceits. Crashaw was first a Protestant, 
but his reading and study at Cambridge led him into Catholicism, 
for which he had by nature a strong affinity. Because of this 
change of religious views he was compelled to leave Cambridge 
and England, as the Cromwellian powers were hostile to him. 
He fled to Paris and there lived in poverty until his fellow poet 
Cowley introduced him to the queen of Charles I, who had her- 
self gone to France because of troubled conditions at home; and 
through her influence Crashaw was given a place in an Italian 
monastery. He died in Italy the year after his arrival there. 
Crashaw's poetry is much more impassioned and mystical than 
Herbert's and consequently more uneven; now and then he rises 
to almost Miltonian heights when he sings of divine love with the 
ecstasy of a lover for his earthly mistress; again, and all too often, 
he lingers in the frigid zone of clever quibbling. He is at his best 
in "The Flaming Heart," an enraptured tribute to Saint Theresa 
( u O thou undaunted daughter of desires!"), and in his "Descrip- 
tion of a Religious House" which closes with these luminous 
Lines: 



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167 



The self-remembering soul sweetly recovers 

Her kindred with the stars; not basely hovers 

Below: but meditates her immortal way 

Home to the original source of Light and intellectual day. 

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) enjoyed an immense reputation 
in his own day: at Cambridge he was regarded as a poetic wonder ; 
he was learned both in the sciences and in literature. All this, 
however, did not save him to posterity. His lack of thought and 
passion and his extreme conceitfulness account for the rapid decay 
of interest in most of his work during the next generation. His 
two touching and eloquent poems, "On the Death of Mr. William 
Hervey" and "On the Death of Mr. Crashaw," still hold a high 
place in seventeenth-century verse. Cowley's greatest achieve- 
ment outside of his prose essays is to be found in his Pindaric 
Odes, a poetic form which he loosely adapted from the Greek poet 
Pindar and which was exceedingly popular with English poets 
down to the time of Thomas Gray. 

Edmund Waller (1605-1687) was in his own day second only 
in fame to Cowley; he is remembered to-day as the author of 
several graceful lyrics, chief among which are the lines, "On a 
Girdle," and the song, "To a Rose," of which the first stanza is 
as follows: 

Go, lovely Rose, 

Tell her that wastes her time and me, 

That now she knows, 

When I resemble her to thee, 

How sweet and fair she seems to be. 

Waller's most notable contribution, however, is the polished 
rhyming couplet, commonly known as the "heroic couplet," 
which reached artistic perfection in the verse of Alexander Pope 
in the next century. This form of verse had, of course, been in 
use since the days of Chaucer, but Waller gave it such precision, 
such finish and regularity, that henceforth it was practically a 



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new instrument ready for the more brilliant wit of Dryden and 
Pope, the masters of classicism. The following lines from "His 
Majesty's Escape at St. Andrews" will serve to illustrate Waller's 
use of the heroic couplet: * 

He rent the crown from vanquished Henry's head, 
Raised the white rose, and trampled on the red, 
Till love triumphing o'er the victor's pride, 
Brought Mars and Warwick to the conquered side. 

Marvell.— Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), Milton's friend and 
assistant when Latin Secretary to Cromwell, may be regarded as 
a connecting link between this group of poets and Milton; indeed, 
so varied is Marvell's verse that it reveals something of the manner 
of Spenser, of Donne, of the Cavalier lyrists, and of Milton him- 
self. Marvell's earlier poetry shows a romantic appreciation of 
nature quite unusual in the seventeenth century, while his "Ode 
to Cromwell" and his tribute to Paradise Lost are characterized 
by dignity and noble restraint. 

The Cavalier Poets. — Along with the poets just considered 
there flourished a little group of singers who voiced in graceful 
lyrics the less serious impulses of the age. They were Royalist 
in their sympathies and shared the declining fortunes of the court, 
treating with lofty scorn the solemn Puritans. Recklessly loyal 
to their king and gallantly worshipful of woman, the Cavalier 
poets were a dashing band of pleasure-loving gentlemen who 
cared little for political strife and religious controversy, prefer- 
ring, as Milton says, 

To sport with Amaryllis in the shade 
Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair. 

Their most characteristic writing is the courtly amorous poetry, 
dainty, gay, and trivial. On the one hand, they touch the Eliza- 
bethan lyric, that spontaneous outburst of song when the English 
garden was all ablaze with bloom, and on the other, the formal 
Restoration poetry, when English song had been chilled by the 



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breath of Classicism. Yet in spite of its general artificiality the 
Cavalier lyric is an exquisite product: some of these songs are 
among the most charming light poems in our language, as appeal- 
ing as the simple freshness of childhood and spring flowers, full 
of careless rapture and pastoral sweetness, and all the better for 
the faint undertone of sadness. The most typical of the Cavalier 
poets are Carew, Lovelace, Suckling, and Herrick. CAREW is the 
earliest of these singers and helps to connect the Elizabethan and 
Puritan periods; the delicacy of his artistic form may be seen in 
the following stanzas from his best known lyric: 

Ask me no more where Jove bestows, 
When June is past, the fading rose, 
For in your beauty's orient deep 
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep. 

Ask me no more whither do stray 
The golden atoms of the day, 
For, in pure love, heaven did prepare 
Those powders to enrich your hair. 

Ask me no more whither doth haste 
The nightingale when May is past, 
For in your sweet dividing throat 
She winters and keeps warm her note. 

LOVELACE and SUCKLING are usually mentioned together be- 
cause of their social accomplishments, their adventurous careers, 
and their tragic deaths: Lovelace was handsome and of engaging 
manners, was born to wealth and station, but suffered imprison- 
ment, and died in abject poverty; Suckling was a gentleman of 
fortune, a courtier and a soldier, who wandered through France, 
Ttaly, Spain, and Germany seeking adventure, was tortured by 
the Spanish Inquisition, and finally committed suicide in Paris. 
Such, in a sentence, were the romantic lives of these two typical 
Cavaliers, whose verses carelessly thrown off have kept their 
names from perishing. Lovelace left two beautiful little poems, 
"Going to the Wars," and 'To Althea in Prison": from the first 



170 



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is taken this stanza, an apology to his lady-love for leaving her 
and going to war- 
Yet this inconstancy is such 
As you too shall adore, — 
I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
Loved I not honour more; 

and from the second these familiar lines — 

Stone walls do not a prison make, 

Nor iron bars a cage; 
Minds innocent and quiet take 

That for an heritage; 
If I have freedom in my love 

And in my soul am free, 
Angels alone, that soar above, 

Enjoy such liberty. 

Suckling's most captivating lyric is this address to a disconsolate 
lover: 

Why so pale and wan, fond lover? 

Prithee, why so pale? 
Will, when looking well can't move her, 

Looking ill prevail? 

Prithee, why so pale? 

Why so dull and mute, young sinner? 

Prithee, why so mute? 
Will, when speaking well can't win her, 

Saying nothing do't? 

Prithee, why so mute? 

Quit, quit, for shame! This will not move; 

This cannot take her. 
If of herself she will not love, 

Nothing can make her: 

The devil take her! 



The chief of the Cavalier group is Robert Herrick, whom we 
shall consider at greater length. 



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171 



Robert Herrick (1591-1664).— Herrick was born in London, 
studied at Cambridge, entered the Church, was given a vicarage 
in Devonshire by Charles I in 1629; from this he was ejected by 
the Puritan government in 1647, but returned in 1662, having 
spent the intervening years in London. In early life Herrick was 
intimate with Ben Jonson and his circle, and came to regard him- 
self as one of the "sons of Ben." The most productive years of 
his life were spent in the country parsonage amid the charming 
scenery of Devonshire; here he kept his pet animals — a dog, a cat, 
a lamb, a goose, and a favorite pig, — watched the simple sports 
of his neighbors, cultivated his flower garden, wrote a sermon 
once a week for a few drowsy parishioners, and composed poetry. 
In 1648 he published a collection of his poems, over twelve hundred, 
under the general title of Hesperides and Noble Numbers, the 
latter name having reference to his religious verse. The Hes- 
perides contains the best of Herrick's poetry, the subjects of which 
he announces at the very beginning of the volume: 

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers, 

Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers; 

I sing of may-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, 

Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes; 

I write of youth, of love, and have access 

By these, to sing of cleanly wantonness; 

I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece, 

Of balm, of oil, of spice, and amber-greece; 

I sing of times trans-shifting; and I write 

How roses first came red, and lilies white. 

I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing 

The court of Mab and of the Fairie King. 

I write of Hell; I sing, and ever shall, 

Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all. 

Such is the varied matter of Herrick's song. He was more 
fortunate than his fellow-poets in his twenty years of undisturbed 
quiet in the country, where he could take his time to work out 
his poems as a true artist; and consequently we have from him, 
among the lighter singers of the period, the most satisfying 
achievement both in substance and form. He had read in one 



172 



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way or another, we may be sure, the best lyric poets of Greece 
and Rome — Theocritus, Martial, Catullus — and from them gained 
a clearer sense of form and the value of artistic restraint; and then, 
too, he had sat at the feet of rare Ben Jonson, himself no mean 
classicist. But above all, Herrick drew his inspiration from green 
fields, fragrant gardens, country lanes, and the doings of rural 
folk unspoiled by the artificial life of city and court. We find in 
his poetry, therefore, a freshness and a naturalness which we 
sadly miss in the other Cavalier singers. His primroses are indeed 
"filled with morning dew," his daffodils we would not willingly 
part with, his rosebuds we fain would gather too, and when 
"Corinna Goes a-Maying" we would get up early and go along 
with her. All this may be very trivial as compared with the 
sterner issues of a time that tried men's souls; still, it is one side 
of life and not to be despised, even when we are about to turn our 
thoughts towards the great figure of that lonely Puritan, John 
Milton, whose "soul was like a star and dwelt apart." 

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674) 

O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies, 
O skilled to sing of time or eternity, 

God-gifted organ-voice of England, 

Milton, a name to resound for ages. 

— Tennyson. 

His Life. — John Milton was born five years after Elizabeth died, eight 
years before Shakespeare died, just as Ben Jonson was becoming famous, 
and in the lifetime of Bacon and Raleigh; the year before his birth Captain 
John Smith had founded Jamestown, Virginia, and twelve years afterward 
the Pilgrims landed in New England; three years after he was born the 
King James Bible appeared. Milton came into the world, therefore, at a 
time when great men and great movements were occupying the public mind. 
He was in a sense a belated Elizabethan, but he did not look backward; 
rather, with prophetic instinct he threw himself into the coming conflict. 

Milton's life may for convenience be divided into four periods: (1) Youth 
and Education (1608-1632); (2) Horton and Travels (1632-1640); (3) Poli- 
tics and Prose (1640-1660); (4) Retirement (1660-1674). 

Youth and Education: London and Cambridge. John Milton was born in 
Bread Street in the heart of London on December 9, 1608. In the same 



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street not far away was the famous Mermaid Tavern where Shakespeare, 
Ben Jonson, and their fellows had many a merry meeting, and very likely 
little John Milton often saw them pass his father's door. Milton's father 
was a scrivener, — that is, one whose business was the writing of deeds, con- 
tracts, wills and the like. He was a prosperous man, able to give his son 
excellent cultural advantages, loving books and music and himself a musi- 
cian and composer of some note. From him Milton acquired a fondness 
for music and art which became the foundation of his literary greatness. In 
the midst of London the boy spent the first sixteen years of his life. 
After receiving private instruction from a Mr. Young, Milton attended 
St. Paul's School for five years (1620-1625), studying there Latin, Greek, 
and very likely Italian, French, and Hebrew; here, besides, he formed a 
lasting friendship with Charles Diodati. Milton was a diligent, even a 
consecrated, student, as the following words from one of his prose works 
(Defev^io Secunda) prove: 

"My father destined me while yet a little boy for the study of humane 
letters, which I seized with such eagerness that from the twelfth year of 
my age I scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight; which 
indeed was the first cause of injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness 
there were also added frequent headaches." 

In 1625 Milton entered Christ's College, Cambridge, where he spent 
seven years, taking his B. A. degree in 1629 and his M. A. in 1632. His rooms 
are still pointed out to visitors, and so is the ancient mulberry-tree in the 
beautiful gardens of Christ's College which tradition says Milton planted. 
The years at Cambridge University were devoted to hard study and the 
writing of poems in Latin and English; the beauty of the old university 
town and its surroundings made a deep impression upon Milton's sensitive 
soul, especially the river Cam, of which he speaks in "Lycidas:" 

Next Camus, reverend sire, went footing slow, 
His mantle hairy and his bonnet sedge 
Inwrought with figures dim. 

While at Cambridge he composed many college exercises in Latin, poems 
of no very great value except as earnest of higher things; but he wrote in 
1629, when he was twenty-one, an "Ode on the Morning of Christ's Na- 
tivity," his first important poem; two years later he wrote a sonnet, "On 
Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three," in which he solemnly dedi- 
cated himself to the service of God and man. The next year he announced 
to his father in the Latin poem, "Ad Patrem," that he had chosen poetry 
as his vocation. At Cambridge Milton was noted for the strength and beauty 
of his character, his handsome face, and his serious devotion to learning. 




JOHN MILTON 



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175 



Life at Horton and his Travels. From Cambridge Milton went to live 
with his father, now retired from business, at the village of Horton in 
Buckinghamshire eighteen or twenty miles from London. This is one of the 
most attractive country districts in England; its fertile meadows are well 
watered by glinting streamlets flowing into the Colne and the Thames and 
shaded by stately oaks and beeches; in sight are the towers of Windsor 
Castle, "bosomed high in tufted trees," and Eton, one of the most famous 
schools of England, near the winding Thames. Here Milton spent nearly 
six years, reading the Latin and Greek authors and dreaming beside still 
waters and in green pastures. His father had expected that his gifted son 
would enter the Church or perhaps study law; and indeed Milton had in turn 
thought of each of these professions, only to decide more firmly to follow 
the bent of his genius toward poetry. His father wisely acquiesced in this 
decision and encouraged him in his fuller preparation for his high calling. 
During these Horton years the so-called Minor Poems were written — 
"L' Allegro," "II Penseroso," "Arcades," "Comus,"and "Lycidas." Mean- 
while the young poet had made the acquaintance of the eminent musician 
Henry Lawes and of Sir Henry Wotton, head of Eton, both of whom gener- 
ously befriended him, the first in helping to present " Comus," and the 
second in giving him letters of introduction to eminent men on the con- 
tinent. 

In the spring of 1638 Milton set out for Italy, the home of poets and artists 
and the literary storehouse of antiquity, whither for some time his thoughts 
had been turning as to a land of heart's desire. He went first to Paris, 
where he met Grotius, the great Dutch scholar and philosopher; thence he 
journeyed by way of Genoa and Pisa to Florence, the fair "lily of the Arno," 
with its memories of Dante, Savonarola, and Michael Angelo. So cordial 
a welcome awaited him there from a large circle of congenial spirits that 
he remained two months, meeting the blind old astronomer Galileo, who 
was in prison for daring to think for himself. At Naples he learned of the 
disturbed conditions in England — war had broken out between the Scotch 
Covenanters and Charles I — and decided to return home. Milton returned 
after an absence of fifteen or sixteen months to find his country on the 
verge of civil war; the Horton home was soon broken up and he and his 
father moved back to London where in hired lodgings Milton for the next 
few years divided his time between teaching his two nephews, along with 
several other pupils, and planning a great poem on a lofty theme. The 
Italian journey was the richest artistic experience of his life, which for the 
next twenty years was destined to be troubled by civil and religious con- 
troversy. 

Politics and Prose. Between the years 1640 and 1660 Milton gave him- 
self almost entirely to the writing of prose pamphlets on matters of Church 
and State. In the heated controversy between the Royalists, or Church 



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party, and the Parliamentarians, or Puritans, Milton was led by his pas- 
sionate love of liberty to side with the Parliamentarians; but Milton was 
not an extreme Puritan and never formally separated himself from the 
Established Church. He joined the Puritan party because to him it stood 
for purity and liberty in a time of religious and civil tyranny; at heart 
Milton was an independent. His first five pamphlets were devoted to a 
discussion of church government. 

In 1643, the year following the outbreak of the great Civil War between 
t*he king and Parliament, Milton married Mary Powell, daughter of a Royal- 
ist; as was to be expected, they did not live happily together, for she was 
young and socially inclined, while her husband was twice as old and given 
to severe studies and the simple life. Finally reconciled, however, after 
a year or two of separation they dwelt together in peace until Mary Milton's 
death in 1653. Milton's other two marriages were attended with greater 
happiness. Out of his first ill-starred union grew a series of tracts on mar- 
riage and divorce which, like most of his controversial pamphlets, are not 
very pleasant reading to-day. Following these, however, are two notable 
utterances, a letter on Education, addressed to Samuel Hartlib, and the 
pamphlet on the freedom of the press, the Areopagitica; a Speech for the 
Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. The Areopagitica is one of the noblest 
defenses of free speech ever penned and should be read by every one who 
would know the real greatness of John Milton. His views on education 
are surprisingly modern. Among the later pamphlets — the series growing 
out of Milton's defense of the execution of Charles I in 1649 — the one of 
most interest to-day is the Defensio Secunda, because in it Milton gives an 
account of his own youth and noble ambitions. 

In 1652 Milton became totally blind, the result of long years of constant 
reading and study begun, as we have seen, in his early boyhood. Three 
years before this Milton had been appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues 
under Cromwell's Government, his duties being the writing of letters, ad- 
dresses, and defenses in the Latin language to foreign states. He held this 
official position until the end of the Commonwealth in 1660, when the 
Restoration of the monarchy took place and the voice of the Puritan was 
stilled. During all these twenty years of controversy his poetic product 
was a handful of sonnets. 

Retirement. After years of strife and sorrow at last came peace to the 
blind and battle-scarred poet. It is a wonder he was not hanged by the 
returning Royalists; he was arrested, detained for a short while until he 
paid a fine, and then released; his blindness, his comparative unimportance 
politically, and a traditional respect for poetic genius, may be regarded as 
the principal causes of his escape. The fourteen remaining years of his life 
were spent in quiet retirement mostly in the neighborhood of Bunhill Fields, 
London, where in a modest house given over to plain living and on his part 



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to high thinking, he received his friends and dictated his greatest poems, 
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. Here on No- 
vember 8, 1674, Milton died, and a few days later his body, followed by 
"all his learned and great friends in London, not without a friendly con- 
course of the vulgar," was buried in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate. 

His Personality. — Milton was of medium height, of unusually 
fair complexion in his early manhood, had dark gray eyes, and 
auburn hair falling on his shoulders, and an oval face of such 
delicacy of expression that at Cambridge he was nicknamed the 
"Lady of Christ's." But Milton never was effeminate; he was 
one of the most fearless of men in the utterance of his convic- 
tions; he had an erect and manly bearing, and he was a good 
fencer. From his youth up he felt himself set apart for higher 
things, and this inner consciousness of dedication to some sacred 
task held him somewhat aloof from the crowd, so that it would 
not be easy to picture Milton among the genial company at the 
Mermaid. Neither his training nor his temperament led him 
along the primrose path of dalliance; his young feet wandered 
in very different ways, as he himself tells us: 

I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of 
his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a 
true poem, that is, a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest 
things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men, or famous cities, 
unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which 
is praiseworthy. 

Such was Milton's lofty conception of what a poet should be, 
and this he strove to realize within himself. The man Milton is 
in truth as interesting and morally worthy as the poet Milton, 
and his life itself was almost an epic poem in its high seriousness, 
its conflicts, and its consecration to duty, while in the cause of 
liberty of mind and conscience he was a fighter as doughty as 
Cromwell, along with whom he looms large above the other 
figures of his day. His purity of life, his loftiness of character, 
his passionate devotion to duty, his love of beauty, his culture 
and his enthusiasm for knightly ideals, go to prove that in the 
Puritan there was much of the Cavalier.' 



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His Works. — Milton's literary activity divides itself into three 
well denned periods: (1) Earlier, or Lyric, including "Ode on the 
Nativity," "L' Allegro," "II Penseroso," "Comus," "Lycidas," 
and other shorter poems; (2) Middle, or Prose, including Areo- 
pagitica and various controversial pamphlets, and most of the 
Sonnets; (3) Later, or Epic, including Paradise Lost, Paradise 
Regained, and the drama Samson Agonistes. 

The Early or so-called Minor Poems (1629-1637), The first 
important poem of Milton is the"Ode on the Morning of Christ's 
Nativity," written in 1629 at the age of twenty-one while he was 
at Cambridge. It is really a solemn hymn chanting the beginning 
of the reign of the Prince of Peace before whose coming the pagan 
gods and their oracles are dumb. The poem shows a slight 
Spenserian influence in the introductory stanzas, but soon changes 
into a newer harmony distinctly Miltonian. The next year the 
well-known lines "On Shakespeare" were written, and two years 
later were prefixed to the Second Folio of Shakespeare's plays. 
Then came the famous group composed while Milton was living 
at Horton— "L' Allegro," "II Penseroso," "Comus," "Lycidas." 
The first two are lyric and descriptive companion pieces, each 
reflecting a different mood of the same person. "1/ Allegro" is 
the joyous, mirthful man whose imagination revels in country 
sights and sounds from morn till eve, flies to "towered cities" 
and the "well-trod stage," and finally is lulled to rest by "soft 
Lydian airs." "II Penseroso" is the pensive man whose fancy 
dwells on the quieter scenes and more subdued sounds of evening 
and the moonlight night vocal with nightingales, preferring even 
in the morning hours retired haunts by "waters murmuring" and 
the "dim religious light" of some cathedral. Each poem is a 
series of pictures in perfect harmony with the respective moods 
and presented with fine lyric effect. It is easy to see that of the 
two, "II Penseroso" is in general more nearly akin to Milton's 
temperament, and it is worth noting that the poem closes with an 
allusion to some nobler achievement which the poet is meditating, 
when "old experience" may attain — 

To something like prophetic strain. 



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179 



"Comus" was written in 1634, and was acted the same year 
at Ludlow Castle in honor of the Earl of Bridgewater, a prominent 
nobleman who had been recently made President of Wales. 
Milton's friend Henry Lawes wrote the music for the songs and 
took the part of the Attendant Spirit, and Milton may have 
been present at the performance. "Comus" is a masque, or musical 
drama designed for presentation on some special occasion before 
a royal or noble personage, and as such it does not require the 
action and variety of a popular play. The plot of "Comus" is 
quite simple: two brothers and a sister lose their way in a forest; 
the sister becoming separated from them falls into the hands of 
Comus, a base magician, who leads her into the midst of his circle 
of brutish companions with the intention of transforming her into 
their likeness; she resists and is rescued in the nick of time by her 
brothers, guided hither by the Attendant Spirit. The main 
interest of "Comus," however, is not dramatic but poetic and 
moral, for in it are stretches of singularly sweet and serious blank 
verse and several exquisite lyrics. The theme of "Comus" is the 
triumph of virtue over the appeal of the senses. In this poem 
Milton for the first time strikes that clear note of high distinction 
which gives such music and stateliness to his later poetry. 

"Lycidas" was written in 1637 as a tribute to Edward King, 
a college friend of Milton's who had been drowned in the Irish 
Sea in the summer of that year. Milton's poem appeared in a 
memorial volume to King made up of contributions from various 
admirers. "Lycidas" is a pastoral poem, an elegy, in which Mil- 
ton under the guise of a shepherd bewails the loss of his friend 
represented as another shepherd. The classical imagery is varied 
by the introduction of thinly veiled English scenes and characters 
connected with the experience and thought of Milton and his dead 
friend, the most famous allusions being to their alma mater, 
Cambridge, and the "corrupted clergy" of the time. After a 
sort of apology for violating his determination to write no more 
poetry until he should be ready to speak out on the lofty epic 
theme which he had in mind, and after an invocation to the Muses, 
Milton begins the lament proper, or monody, which rises from 



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tender reminiscence on through depression of spirit to final tri- 
umph at the thought of the dead shepherd's immortality and 
influence. The poem closes with an epilogue in which the singer 
of this pastoral lay announces that he will turn — 

To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. 

The strict unity of this wonderful elegy is somewhat broken, of 
course, by the attack on the hirelings in the Church, but the 
poem gains in moral intensity thereby and becomes more charac- 
teristically Miltonian. "Lycidas" is one of the greatest of that 
line of elegies from Spenser's "Astrophel" to Tennyson's In 
Memoriam by which our poetry has been so spiritually enriched. 
Considered purely as poetry, it is one of the most exquisitely 
harmonious utterances in all literature. 

Middle Period: Prose and Sonnets. Milton wrote something 
like twenty-five pamphlets on civil and religious themes, mostly 
controversial, between 1640 and 1660, but these as a whole are 
of little interest to-day except to special students of Milton. The 
Areopagitica, of which mention has already been made, is a noble 
piece of impassioned prose rising in certain places where litera- 
ture is touched upon into a strain of lofty eloquence. This most 
literary of Milton's prose works was occasioned by the passage 
of a bill by Parliament for a stricter censorship over the press in 
general so that no unlicensed or unregistered book might be 
published. The Areopagitica is an address to Parliament pro- ■ 
testing against this measure; and while it was not actually deliv- 
ered, it nevertheless had a wholesome influence on public opinion 
toward greater freedom of thought. The name was suggested 
to Milton by a speech of one of the old Greek orators before the 
Areopagus, or Great Council of Athens, which met on the "Hill 
of Ares" (in Greek, Areopagos), or Mars' Hill. Here are several 
memorable sentences from the Areopagitica: 

Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life 
in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they 
do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intel- 



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181 



lect that bred them As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: 

who kills a man kills a reasonable creature; but he who destroys a good 
book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many 
a man lives a burden to the earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood 
of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond 
life. 

The Sonnets number twenty-three, including several in Italian, 
and most of them belong to the twenty years of the political and 
prose period. Several are addressed to women, some are political 
and patriotic, several celebrate the virtues of friends and great 
leaders, and others are purely personal. The personal sonnets, 
"On Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-three" and "On His 
Blindness," are like solemn hymns of consecration and resigna- 
tion; that "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont" and the one 
"To the Lord General Cromwell"*are like prayers in the form of 
patriotic chants; the youthful sonnet "To the Nightingale," 
beginning, — 

O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray 
Warblest at eve when all the woods are still, — 

is the most romantic in tone. Milton's sonnets reflect the high 
moral seriousness of a patriotic and prophetic nature in which a 
love of the beautiful is happily combined with an almost austere 
devotion to duty. Milton used the Italian form of sonnet — an 
octave made up of two quatrains and a sextet composed of two 
tercets — differing from the Shakespearean sonnet already de- 
scribed. The following typical sonnet, "On his Blindness," will 
serve to illustrate both the structure and literary quality of this 
poetic form as employed by Milton: 

When I consider how my light is spent 

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, 
And that one talent which is death to hide 
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
My true account, lest He returning chide; 
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" 



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I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent 
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need 

Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best 

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state 
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, 

And post o'er land and ocean without rest; 

They also serve who only stand and wait." 

The Later Poems. As far back as the Cambridge days Milton 
had vaguely contemplated the writing of a great poem of dramatic 
or epic nature on some vast theme of national or religious import. 
For a while the story of King Arthur appealed to him, but this 
was given up in favor of a Biblical subject as better suited to his 
own temperament and at the same time as likely to be of more 
general interest. The first sketch of Paradise Lost, conceived as 
a drama, was made between 1640 and 1642; then came the Civil 
War and the strenuous years of controversy, and the draft of 
the great Scriptural Drama was laid aside. Not until 1658 did 
Milton actually begin work on Paradise Lost, by this time pro- 
jected as an epic poem. The composition of it occupied the 
next six or seven years, though it was not published until 1667, 
when it appeared in ten books, the division into twelve books 
being made in the second edition, issued in 1674, the year of Mil- 
ton's death. Milton, it will be remembered, became totally 
blind in 1652, and consequently Paradise Lost and the other later 
poems were dictated to an amanuensis — one of the poet's daugh- 
ters, his wife, or some kinsman or friend. We are told that he 
composed most easily during the autumn, winter, and early spring; 
that he dictated from his easy chair or in bed, ringing when 
poetic inspiration seized him for his daughter to take down his 
verses, which flowed in rapid succession. The reader of the won- 
derful poetry of Paradise Lost should bear in mind that Milton 
spoke these lines, actually testing by the ear their musical quality 
— a test, by the way, which should be applied to all poetry and in 
particular to the verse of Milton. 

Paradise Lost is an epic pcem in twelve books, belonging to 
that kind of poetry which includes Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, 



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183 



Paradife loft. 

A 

P O E M 

Written in 

TEN B O O KS 

By JOHN MILTON. 

Licenfed and Entred according 
to Order. 

London 

Printed, and are to be fold by feter Parker 

under Creed Church neer Aldgrte 5 And by 
Btitrt Btuher at the Tut kj Head in Biflnffcatt-flrut ; 
And MeahiM Wdkgt , under St. Vmflm Chuicfa 
in fUet-jkeei, jdtf?. 



FACSIMILE OF FIRST PAGE OF FIRST EDITION OF 
PARADISE LOST 



184 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Virgil's Aeneid, and our own Beowulf. An epic may in general 
be defined as a narrative poem of elevated character on some great 
and noble theme of racial or national interest. The central 
theme of Paradise Lost is the Fall of Man, its causes, attendant 
circumstances, and results; the definitely announced purpose of 
the poet is to- 

assert Eternal Providence, 
And justify the ways of God to men. 

But Milton wanders far afield, embraces within the range of his 
vision the Universe of Heaven, Hell, Chaos, the Earth, and all 
the Planets, so that the "loss of Eden" is of minor imaginative 
interest and the purely theological part the least sustained. 

The poem opens with a marvelous picture of Satan and his host of rebel- 
lious angels just awaking to consciousness after a nine days' stupor on the 
fiery lake of Hell following a nine days' fall from the battlements of Heaven; 
picture after picture follows — Satan arousing his bold compeers, the ringing 
appeals, the marshaling of the multitudes of fallen angels, the Debate in 
Hell, the final resolution to send Satan on his perilous journey to the newly 
created Earth for the ruin of Man. Throughout these first two books Satan 
is the dominating figure, the majestic Archangel with glory dimmed but of 
unconquerable will. The third book is concerned with the Council in Heaven, 
at which the Father announces his gracious purposes toward man and the 
Son his sacrifice, and with Satan's approach to Earth. The fourth book 
introduces Adam and Eve, tells of Satan's entrance to Paradise, his detec- 
tion by the guarding Angel and temporary departure. Books five, six, 
seven, and eight are taken up with the Archangel's visit to Adam and Eve, 
his account of the war in Heaven, the creation, God's purposes, and a re- 
peated warning against Satan. Book nine relates the temptation of Eve 
by Satan in the form of a serpent, her fall and Adam's; books ten and eleven 
have to do with Satan's return and God's announcement of Satan's ultimate 
overthrow and Man's victory through the Son. In the twelfth book the 
banishment, not without hope, of Adam and Eve is the last scene of this 
eventful story: 

In either hand the hastening Angel caught 
Our lingering parents, and to the eastern gate 
Led them direct, and down the cliff as fast 
To the subjected plain — then disappeared. 



THE PURITAN PERIOD 



185 



They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld 

Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, 

Waved over by that flaming brand; the gate 

With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms. 

Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; 

The world was all before them, where to choose 

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. 

They, hand and hand, with wandering steps and slow, 

Through Eden took their solitary way. 

In the first two books Milton's imagination reaches its highest 
flight; Satan is the heroic protagonist whose splendid courage in 
defeat excites admiration and suggests the careers of certain 
great warriors who fought against overwhelming odds; involun- 
tarily our sympathies are with him as no doubt Milton's were 
for the moment. Then Satan degenerates into the cunning serpent 
and we turn against him as did his own companions even when 
he returned from that seductive enterprise in Eden. After the 
first two books the interest is not so evenly and thrillingly main- 
tained; long stretches of theological exposition chill the current, 
which happily gets free ever and anon to flow mazily murmuring 
through "bowery loneliness and bloom profuse." The style is 
always lofty, the verse is always an echo of the sense: low things 
are lifted up out of the trivial and given such distinction and dig- 
nity that we admire sometimes against our judgment; our ear is 
taken captive by the majesty or lyric sweetness of the lines. No 
other poem in our literature is so spacious, so full of sustained 
splendor in the treatment of high themes and of solemn beauty 
in picturing quieter scenes and personal sorrows. One word alone 
fitly describes the nobility and elevation of this supreme epic 
poem of our literature, the word "sublime," which by common 
consent belongs to Milton's masterpiece. 

Paradise Regained is a sort of sequel to the greater epic, being 
the result, it is said, of a suggestion of Milton's Quaker friend 
Thomas Ellwood, to whom the poet had submitted for reading 
the manuscript of Paradise Lost, that he should write a "Paradise 
Found." Milton accordingly set to work and within a year 
Paradise Regained was finished. This was in 1666, immediately 



186 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



following the completion of Paradise Lost; Paradise Regained 
was published, along with Samson Agonistes, in 1671. Paradise 
Regained is in four books, and the central theme, to which Milton 
closely confines himself, is the Temptation of Christ in the Wilder- 
ness. As in the first great temptation by Satan mankind fell 
through Adam's disobedience, in the second great temptation by 
Satan mankind triumphs through Christ's victory over Satan: 
this is the conception worked out by Milton in Paradise Regained. 
The latter poem is distinctly inferior to the first in vigor, range, 
and elevation. Paradise Regained was more hastily composed; 
Milton was no doubt somewhat weary after the long strain of 
Paradise Lost. He was cramped, moreover, by the historical 
requirements and the comparative nearness of the theme, which 
was, besides, too much like that of his other epic to be handled 
with freshness; the wonder is, indeed, that Paradise Regained 
shows so much power and beauty. 

Samson Agonistes, composed about 1667 and published in 
1671, is a dramatic poem after the model of an old Greek tragedy, 
the last utterance of the great Puritan poet. Next to Paradise 
Lost this is the noblest of the works of Milton, and as an expres- 
sion of his personal sentiments in his retirement after the din of 
conflict it is the most significant of his poems. Samson Agonistes 
(the "athlete," or "wrestler") sets forth with all the restraint, 
dignity, and regard for the classic unities which characterize a 
Greek play, the suffering and death of Samson, blind and in prison 
among his enemies, the Philistines. As we read this great drama, 
epic in its stately seriousness and largeness, we are time and again 
reminded of Milton's own conflicts: he like Samson was blind and 
living under the rule of the royalist Cavaliers, the Philistines, 
against whom he had fought with all his might; he too had chosen 
a wife from among his enemies and had bitterly suffered; he was 
lonely in his old age, an object of distrust or indifference to the 
''politician lords" around the king. Samson Agonistes, then, is 
in a sense an allegory of captive Puritanism in the England of the 
Restoration, and the old blind poet is thinly veiled under the 
guise of Samson 



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187 



Characteristics and Contribution. — We are impressed, first of 
all, with the moral nobility of the man and the poet, his lofty 
purity and his steadfast devotion to duty. His love of beauty, 
his fondness for classical allusion even in the midst of his Bibli- 
cal settings and personages, his love of British folk-lore, and the 
graceful lyric quality of his minor poems, show how much of the 
classicist and the romantic Cavalier was mingled with the sterner 
Puritan. Milton's passionate defense of liberty, his independence 
of thought, his fidelity to conscience, and his eagerness to serve 
his country, show how true a patriot he was, how genuinely 
Anglo-Saxon at heart. 

In life as in art Milton was a lyric and epic poet, not a dramatist; 
he could not detach himself from his poetry, as Shakespeare did 
when he made his plays. Milton puts his own personal opinions 
and characteristics into his works to such an extent that we may 
construct an autobiography from them; this we could not do for 
the dramatic master of the Elizabethans. As compared with 
Shakespeare Milton seems remote and cold, wanting in sympathy 
with human nature and the passions that sway the daily lives of 
men; indeed, the subject matter and the people of his poems are 
not the men and women we see and know. If Shakespeare is 
the poet of Man, Milton is the poet of Angels, flaming Cherubim 
and Seraphim, toward whose high estate man continually aspires; 
and Milton for his vision of other worlds and his wondrous 
"faculty divine" takes his place with the great epic poets of the 
ages, Homer, Virgil, Dante. Into our own literature he brought 
a stateliness and sublimity, a spaciousness and a sustained 
grandeur, which have enriched our speech and ennobled our 
imagination. Blank verse, to which Marlowe first gave distinc- 
tion and which Shakespeare sounded from the "lowest note to 
the top of the compass," Milton perfected as an instrument of 
infinite range and highest harmony. 

II. PROSE OF THE PURITAN PERIOD 

During this period there is a noteworthy development of Eng- 
lish prose both in style and subject matter. Up to this time, as 



188 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



we have seen, prose lacked definiteness of form, inclining on the 
one. hand to become fantastic, or Euphuistic, and on the other 
to be involved and incoherent. While this latter tendency is 
still manifest in the long Latinistic sentences of the prose writers 
of the earlier Puritan Period, a simpler style is slowly shaping 
itself out of the political and religious controversies in which 
writers and speakers were having considerable practice and in 
which clearness of expression was a positive virtue. Moreover, 
newer and more concrete subjects of literary interest meant a 
more direct and vital style; such matters, for instance, as science, 
philosophy, history, biography, sermons, and tracts for popular 
reading. We have already noted how clearly and pithily Bacon 
expressed himself in his essays and what strong, simple prose 
was employed in the King James Bible. Undoubtedly this model 
of virile prose was gradually exerting an influence on writers who 
had not been steeped in the classics, such as Walton and Bunyan, 
for instance. Other prose authors of the period expressed them- 
selves in an impassioned, rhythmical, or poetic prose resembling 
Hooker's and Raleigh's, which abounds in quotations and clas- 
sical allusions and quaint conceits, and which to us sounds stilted 
and old-fashioned. Among such prose writers are Robert Burton, 
Jeremy Taylor, Thomas Fuller, and Sir Thomas Browne. More 
modern in style than these and withal more vital are Izaak 
Walton and John Bunyan. 

Robert Burton ( 1577-1 640) .—A quaint and curious volume of 
more than half-forgotten lore, the Anatomy of Melancholy, pub- 
lished in 1621, has given to the name of Robert Burton an anti- 
quarian rather than a literary interest; but because the book 
proved a mine of such rich ore for later writers to dig in, the 
author of it attained a literary reputation hardly justified by his 
work. The Anatomy of Melancholy is, in truth, one of the curi- 
osities of literature, into which one may dip or which one may 
skip, as the mood inclines. Burton lived the life of a learned re- 
cluse at Oxford, and his hobby, or "humour," was Melancholy. 
He read everything ancient and modern that he could find on that 
subject, and then made a vast patchwork of quotations with 



THE PURITAN PERIOD 



189 



extensive comments by himself: this is the Anatomy of Melan- 
choly. He anatomizes, or analyzes, melancholy as to its causes, 
symptoms, and cures, dividing the malady into three kinds — 
head melancholy, melancholy of the whole body, and the melan- 
choly of indigestion. The fancifulness of the division is equaled 
only by the suggestions for the cure of the disease : for example, 
as a cure for love melancholy he advises hard work together 
with a judicious use of cucumber, melons, lettuce, rice, and water 
lilies. It is only fair to say, however, that Burton attached more 
importance to the hard work than to the rest of the prescription. 
This odd medley of sense and nonsense is a monumental evidence 
of Burton's wide reading and mental cleverness. Partly medical, 
partly philosophical, the Anatomy of Melancholy reflects in a 
striking manner the temper of the earlier seventeenth century. 

Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Fuller. — Jeremy Taylor was one 
of the great pulpit orators of the seventeenth century, an age of 
noted preachers; he was, besides, a writer of impassioned, rhyth- 
mic prose which moves the reader to-day by the music of its long 
sweeping sentences. Taylor ; s best remembered work is his 
Holy Living and Holy Dying (1650-1651), from which the follow- 
ing extract is taken as an example of his poetic prose: 

But so have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and, 
at first, it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a 
lamb's fleece; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, 
and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put 
on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; 
it bowed the head and broke its stalk; and, at night, having lost some of 
its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn 
faces. The same is the portion of every man and every woman. 

The Liberty of Prophesying (preaching), another of Taylor's works, 
is one of the noblest pleas for tolerance in our language. 

Thomas Fuller was also a clergyman, though of different tem- 
perament from his contemporary, Taylor, and more varied in his 
interests, being an antiquary and biographer as well as a preacher. 
Fuller was a genial and even shrewd observer of men and had a 
quaint humor which gives to his writings a delightful flavor. 



190 



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The Worthies of England (1662) is his most characteristic and 
entertaining work, abounding in wise reflections on men and things. 
Both Taylor and Fuller were strong Royalists and both fared ill while 
the Puritans were in power. Taylor's writings have that undertone 
of melancholy which we noted in the lyrics of the Cavalier poets. 

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682).— Browne was a learned phy- 
sician who, after graduating at Oxford and in medicine at the 
University of Leyden, settled in the town of Norwich to practice 
his profession and quietly continue his scientific studies and his 
religious meditations. He had read widely in the ancient classics 
and in the mediaeval treatises, medleys of science and supersti- 
tion, and from these he drew much curious information which 
he mixed with his own investigations. Browne was a mystic, 
with a fancy for speculating on the odd and unusual, and touched 
by the prevailing melancholy of his age which at times is almost 
morbidness. His first work was Religio Medici (1642), a confes- 
sion of his own creed of religious mysticism; his most interesting 
work, however, is Urn-Burial, an essay upon the vanity of earthly 
ambition suggested by the discovery of some Roman funeral urns 
buried near his home. The book is ostensibly a history of burial 
methods among various peoples, though it is really a series of 
meditations on the tragic emptiness of human pride and glory. 
The style of many passages has a pomp and majesty which remind 
one of the solemn music of a funeral march. Here are three typical 
sentences which will serve to illustrate the stately grandeur of 
the prose of Sir Thomas Browne at its best: 

There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality. . . But the sufficiency 
of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of 
either state, after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, who 
can only destroy our souls and hath assured our resurrection, either of our 
bodies or names hath directly promised no duration. . . . But man is a noble 
animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities 
and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the 
infamy of his nature. 

Izaak Walton (1593-1683).— Izaak Walton, a London linen- 
draper, spent his holidays in the country. He was a lover of nature 



THE PURITAN PERIOD 



191 



and the simple outdoor life, a genial, kindly, companionable man 
with the eye of a naturalist and the heart of a poet. He loved to 
hear milkmaids sing, to watch the flocks in the meadows, to sit 
by the silver stream; he thanked God for "flowers and showers, 
and stomachs and meat, and content and leisure to go a-fishing." 
At the age of sixty Walton wrote a book on fishing, The Complete 
Angler, so full of charming country scenes, so wise and wholesome 
in its charity and quiet humor, that successive generations have 
read and reread it with a growing sense of refreshment. The 
Complete A ngler is a prose idyl permeated with the breath of flowers, 
the songs of birds, the sounds of lowing herds and running streams, 
and with an atmosphere of sweet content, as the fisherman 
(Piscator) talks to the hunter (Venator), his disciple. Walton's 
other work, known collectively as The Lives, is a series of brief 
biographical sketches of Donne, Herbert, Hooker, and other 
notable men of his day. Aside from its intrinsic value as a piece 
of sympathetic appreciation, this book deserves to be remembered 
as one of the earliest examples in our literature of regular biog- 
raphy, a form of writing which was to become in the next cen- 
tury exceedingly popular and which, along with other forms, was 
to contribute to the making of the novel. 

JOHN BUNYAN (1628-1688) 

In politics and war Cromwell stands as the representative 
Puritan; in poetry we have found John Milton to be the high 
interpreter of Puritanism; in prose we shall find that John Bunyan 
is the typical Puritan, though writing in changed times. Milton 
through his education, wide reading, and travels felt the vital 
influence of the Renaissance and was never wholly Puritan, but 
John Bunyan, the poor tinker without classical training, felt the 
quickening impulse of the great religious Reformation which in 
England expressed itself so mightily in Puritanism. Milton found 
a diversity of interests — literature, politics, philosophy, contro- 
versy; Bunyan's thought and energy were wholly given to religion, 
and his one immortal book is a spiritual autobiography. 



192 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



His Life. — John Bunyan was born in the village of Elstow, in Bedford- 
shire, in 1628. His father was poor and the boy's educational opportunities 
were limited to such schooling as the village afforded him while he was not 

working at his father's trade of 
tinker. As a small boy he be- 
gan to help his father, follow- 
ing his humble trade the rest 
of his life. After serving a 
while in the army, before he 
was grown he married at 
about the age of twenty a girl 
as poor as himself. Now began 
the great religious struggle of 
his life, occasioned, it appears, 
by the reading of several devo- 
tional books which his wife, a 
"godly person," had brought 
as her sole dowry. Even from 
his boyhood, however, Bunyan 
had been troubled with terri- 
fying religious visions; now 
they became more vivid and 
terrible until he had no peace. 
The Puritan conscience was at 
work, and Bunyan doubtless 
magnified slight transgressions 
into unpardonable sins. Except 
for his profanity he could hardly 
be charged with any very seri- 
ous violation of the moral law, 
if his other sins were no worse 
than dancing, ringing the bells 
of the parish church, and play- 
ing at the popular sport of tip- 
cat. At any rate, he suffered 
as acutely as if he had really 
been what he said he was, "the 
chief of sinners." After six or 
seven years of spiritual conflict, 
during which he read and 
studied the Bible with intense 
earnestness, Bunyan attained 
comparative religious calm, 




MEMORIAL WINDOW TO JOHN BUNYAN 
IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY 



THE PURITAN PERIOD 



193 



having meanwhile (1653) joined a congregation of Dissenters in Bedford. 
From that time to the end of his life he gave himself unsparingly to good 
works, preaching at home, in neighboring towns and villages, and in 
London whenever opportunity offered. There is abundant testimony to the 
power of Bunyan as a preacher. 

In 1660 Bunyan was thrown into prison for refusing to observe the law 
which forbade unauthorized religious services in private houses and barns, 
a law directed against Non-conformist ministers. Efforts were made to have 
him released, but without avail, and he remained in Bedford jail twelve 
years, during which he wrote and read much. After 1672 Bunyan was free, 
except for an imprisonment of six months in 1675 when he is supposed to have 
written the first part of Pilgrim's Progress. As a Puritan and a dissenting 
preacher he, with many others of his faith, suffered the rigorous prosecu- 
tions of the returning Royalists after the Restoration, but he followed his 
conscience unwaveringly, preferring to remain in prison rather than promise 
to give up preaching. From his release in 1672, due to a pardon under the 
Declaration of Indulgence passed that year, to his death Bunyan continued 
to write and preach; so great, indeed, was his popularity that crowds 
flocked to hear him whenever he was announced to preach in London. He 
died in London on one of these visits in 1688 and was buried in Bunhill 
Fields cemetery. 

His Works and Influence. — Bunyan's books are vivid trans" 
cripts of his own spiritual experiences set forth in more or less 
allegorical form. Exclusive of Pilgrim's Progress, his important 
works are The Holy City, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 
The Holy War, Life and Death of Mr. Badman. The Holy War 
is an allegory in which the knights are Christian warriors arrayed 
against the World, the Flesh, and the Devil; Grace Abounding is 
a detailed account of the author's own spiritual conflicts; The 
Life and Death of Mr. Badman is a powerful character-study 
running through a series of effective dramatic incidents, and in 
some important particulars like the modern novel. 

Bunyan's masterpiece is of course the Pilgrim's Progress, the 
first part of which was published in 1678 and the second part in 
1684. It is the journey of Christian "from this world to that which 
is to come, delivered under the similitude of a dream/ 1 to quote 
a part of the original title. We all know the story: how a man 
called Christian with a book in his hand and a burden on his 
back starts out from the city of Destruction; how he is joined by 



194 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



various persons who hinder or help him; how he falls in the Slough 
of Despond, meets the Lions in the way, passes through the Valley 
of Humiliation, fights the demon Apollyon, enters the Valley of 
the Shadow, suffers in Vanity Fair and Doubting Castle, reaches 
the Delectable Mountains, then the dark River, and on beyond at 
last the shining City and singing Angels. It is all strangely real; 
no shadowy abstractions as in The Fairie Queene, but tangible 
folk with passions and experiences very like our own. No wonder 
men read the Pilgrim's Progress in those times as we would a 
novel to-day, for here was a book in language and pictures which 
everybody could understand, a realistic story of struggles and 
aspirations straight from the heart which the common man would 
gladly read. Bunyan was brought up on the Bible and Foxe's 
Book of Martyrs, and so thoroughly had he assimilated these that 
their strong, concrete, pictorial language became his own; he had, 
moreover, caught the wonderful rhythm of Biblical prose, and this 
gives to many a passage in Pilgrim's Progress a cadence rarely to 
be found even among the poets. 

The appeal of Pilgrim's Progress is universal: old and young, 
learned and illiterate, the high and the low, find in it something 
of actual or potential experience; children read it, or love to hear 
it read, for the romance of the story — the thrilling escapes, the 
fights, the pictures; others read it for comfort and encouragement 
in their spiritual struggles. Next to the Bible no other single 
book in our literature has been so widely read as Pilgrim's Progress; 
during the author's lifetime it went through ten editions, a remark- 
able record; since then it has been translated into more than 
seventy-five languages and dialects, an extraordinary record. It 
is the greatest prose allegory in English literature, as Spenser's 
Fairie Queene is the greatest poetic allegory; it is hardly too much 
to say, indeed, that Pilgrim's Progress is the most powerful prose 
allegory in all literature. Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress 
are the supreme productions of Puritan England. 

Aside from its general literary and religious value, Pilgrim's 
Progress is important because it helped to prepare the way for 
the rise of the English novel in the next century. "To John Bun- 



THE PURITAN PERIOD 



195 



yan," says Professor Cross, 1 "the English novel owes a very great 

debt As no writer preceding him, Bunyan knew the artistic 

effect of minute detail in giving reasonableness to an inpossible 
story. In the Pilgrim's Progress he so mingled with those imagin- 
ative scenes of his own the familiar Scripture imagery and the 
still more familiar incidents of English village life, that the illusion 
of reality must have been to the readers for whom he wrote well- 
nigh perfect. " The book is above all an intensely personal book, 
the mature product of a man whose conversion, preceded and 
followed by agonies and visions, was the supreme crisis of his life; 
a man who was too great and tolerant, though graced by little 
learning and no social prestige, to be either politically or religi- 
ously sectarian. Such was the character and such the work of 
the greatest prose-writer of the Puritan Period. Though he lived 
on far into the Restoration Period and composed his famous 
book in a time of changed ideals, Bunyan was in spirit a typical 
Puritan, worthy to be classed with Cromwell and Milton because 
of his loyalty to conscience and his abiding influence on the minds 
of men. 



1 Development of the English Novel, p. 21. 



196 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 
THE PERIOD IN OUTLINE (1625-1660) 



LITERATURE 
I. Poetry 
The "Spenserian" Poets: Fletcher, 

Browne, Wither 
The "Metaphysical" Poets: Donne, 
Herbert, Crashaw, Cowley, Wal- 
ler 

The Cavalier Poets: Herrick, 
Lovelace, Carew, Suckling 

John Milton (1608-1674): Lyric, 
Prose, Epic; Minor (Horton) 
Poems (1632-37), Paradise Lost 
(1667) 

II. Prose 
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 
1621 

Browne's Religio Medici, 1642 
Walton's Complete Angler (1653) 

and Lives 
John Bunyan (1628-1688): Pil- 
grim's Progress (1678) 



HISTORY 
Reign of Charles I, 1625-1649 

The Commonwealth, 1649-1660 ' 

Cromwell, Protector, 1653-58 

Civil War, 1642-48 

Puritans migrate to New England, 
Cavaliers to Virginia, 1630-49 

Richard Cromwell, 1658-60, 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS :— The Triumph of Puritanism; last of 
the Elizabethans; struggle of Cavalier and Roundhead; religious poetry 
and prose. 



SOME. USEFUL BOOKS 

Historical. — Tulloch's English Puritanism and its Leaders, Gardiner's 
The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, Morley's Life of Crom- 
well, Carlyle's Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. 

Literary.— Mas terman's The Age of Milton (Macmillan), Saintsbury's 
Elizabethan Literature (last four or five chapters), Dowden's Puritan and 
Anglican, Gosse's Jacobean Poets, Schelling's Seventeenth Century Lyrics 
(Ginn), Wendell's The Temper of the Seventeenth Century in Literature, 
Jenks's In the Days of Milton, Froude's Life of Bunyan (English Men of Let- 
ters), Palmer's Life of Herbert, Lives of Donne, Browne, and Taylor, by 
Gosse (English Men of Letters). Selections from the works of writers in 



THE PURITAN PERIOD 



197 



this period may be had in cheap form in Morley's Universal Library (Rout- 
ledge), Bonn's Select Library (Bell), The Temple Classics (Dent), and 
Cassell's National Library. 

Milton.— Works, edited by Masson, Globe ed. (Macmillan). Life, by Gar- 
nett (Great Writers Series), by Pattison (English Men of Letters), by 
Raleigh, by Trent; Corson's Introduction to Milton (Macmillan), Brooke's 
Milton (Appleton) is a valuable little manual. 



\ 



CHAPTER SEVEN 



THE RESTORATION PERIOD 
1660-1700 

THE AGE OF DRYDEN 

The Restoration. — The year 1660 marks one of the great turn- 
ing-points of English history and consequently of English litera- 
ture. That year Charles II came back from France, where he 
had been in exile during. the rule of the Puritans under the Com- 
monwealth, and mounted the throne of his ancestors. The Res- 
toration of the monarchy was hailed with great joy, and the king 
was welcomed home with such popular demonstrations as usually 
greet a conqueror returning victorious from his wars. Charles 
lost no time in letting it be known that the new order of things 
was to be a reign of unrestrained pleasure and reckless gayety. 
The truth is, the mood of the nation had changed; the repression 
of Puritanism had, as was to be expected, resulted in reaction; 
the people were tired of the severity and monotony of the last 
ten or more years and wanted the old games and sports, hungered 
and thirsted for "more cakes and ale," were quite ready to exchange 
dismal England for the good old merry England. Moreover, it 
must be confessed that the high promise of Puritanism had not 
been realized: Cromwell was dead and Milton, old and blind, 
was in retirement, and there was disillusion tending towards chaos; 
the divine passion for liberty seemed to have degenerated into a 
species of military despotism in politics and into something very 
like hypocrisy in religion. At all events, the policy of repression 
had overshot itself and the nation wanted rest and entertainment. 

They got what they wanted with a vengeance. Charles was a 
gay and accomplished voluptuary, of pleasing manners and ready 

[198] 



THE RESTORATION PERIOD 



199 



wit, "a fellow of infinite jest," but without patriotism or honor, 
and shamelessly corrupt. As was the king, so was the court: 
fresh from France, the gilded courtiers took their cue from their 
master and enlivened the capital with the licentious manners of 
a foreign court. They ate, drank, and were merry, caring naught 
for the morrow — "sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine." 
The moral depravity of king and court lowered the tone of political 
and religious life and brought defilement into literature ; high offices 
of State were given to men whose baseness was equaled only by 
their unblushing effrontery, while preferments in the Church 
were handed out to conscienceless time-servers. Dissolute 
courtiers wrote graceful but decadent lyrics for their friends and 
admirers, and a fawning circle of dramatists composed clever 
but immoral plays for the theaters, opened again after eighteen 
years. 

But this riotous excess which attended the reaction from Puri- 
tanism is not to be regarded as reflecting the temper of all the 
English people; the great conservative masses, in whom the 
saving Anglo-Saxon virtues of decency and purity still lived, 
must not be overlooked in any general estimate of this age of 
low standards in court society. The people at large were true to 
their better traditions in spite of the profligacy of the king and 
his ministers and flatterers; but the court sets the fashion in man- 
ners and letters and we are too often inclined to condemn a whole 
nation for the offense of a comparatively small part. Puritanism 
was not altogether a lost cause; the fundamental principles of 
righteousness and liberty which the Puritans fought for triumphed 
in the long run, and England never forgot the lesson she learned 
in those years of bitter struggle for religious and political freedom. 
When in 1688 James II tried to undo the work of a century and 
a half of religious reform, disregarding the strong Protestant senti- 
ments of his people, all England united to drive him from the 
throne and then chose William of Orange for their king. Thus 
the Revolution of 1688 was itself a reaction and successful protest 
against the excesses of the Restoration; the nation put her house 
in order and settled down again to cleaner living and higher 



200 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



thinking. The troublesome doctrine of the divine right of kings 
had been forever settled and constitutional government had 
become an established policy in England. Modern England 
was now ready to enter fully upon her career of colonial and com- 
mercial expansion. 

The French Influence. — Numbers of literary men had left 
England during the disturbed years of the Commonwealth and 
gone to live in Paris where the English king was in exile with his 
courtiers. While in France these Englishmen came to like French 
literature as well as French manners, and when they returned to 
England at the Restoration they introduced both the literary and 
social fashions which they had learned abroad. Their sojourn 
in Paris happened to be in the most brilliant social and literary 
period of French history, the age of Louis XIV — the Golden, 
or Augustan Age of France — in which flourished the great dram- 
atists Corneille, Racine, and Moliere, and the eminent critic 
Boileau, the literary lawgiver of the latter half of the seventeenth 
century. As in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Italy was 
supreme in literary reputation over Europe, so in the seventeenth 
century France was supreme. The Renaissance, as we have seen, 
came to England from Italy; the next literary impulse came from 
France through the returning exiles and worked an almost start- 
ling change in English poetry and prose. 

The French writers of the Louis XIV period were guided in their 
work by the rules laid down for dramatic composition by the an- 
cient classical authorities, such as Aristotle and Horace, caring 
more for regularity and finish than for depth of feeling and lofty 
imagination, more for form than for spirit. Considering this 
regular and restrained style as elegant and "proper," the French 
critics and their English imitators regarded Shakespeare and the 
other Elizabethans as wild and irregular geniuses, little better, 
indeed, than barbarians. We find, for instance, in the diary of 
John Evelyn, who wrote in the reign of Charles II and later, 
this statement: "I saw Hamlet played; but now the old plays 
begin to disgust this refined age, since his Majesty's being so long 
abroad." This view is the prevailing one among critics of the 



THE RESTORATION PERIOD 



201 



Restoration Period and marks the rise of Classicism in our litera- 
ture, as opposed to the romantic spirit of Elizabethan poetry 
under Italian influence. We shall see later on how this French 
importation of Classicism dominated English poetry and prose 
for the next hundred years. 

The New Literature. — The literature of the Puritan Period 
overlaps that of the Restoration Period proper, for both Milton 
and Bunyan composed their greatest works in the latter period; 
but new tendencies had already begun to manifest themselves 
side by side with the older literature. In the first place, the new 
poetry was written almost altogether in the "heroic couplet/' 
or two rhyming iambic pentameter lines containing one complete 
thought. As already pointed out, the poet Waller had introduced 
this form years before his pupil John Dryden made it the pre- 
vailing fashion. In the Restoration poetry the couplet became a 
polished unit through which a clever literary artist delivered 
himself of witty epigrams at the expense of some contemporary 
political, religious, or social movement and its principal advocate: 
this is Satire, of which more will be said later on. The new poetry 
was cold and formal, hard and intellectual, restrained and regular, 
as compared with the impassioned, highly colored, emotional qual- 
ities of much of the older poetry. 

In the second place, the new prose was precise, clear, direct, 
in striking contrast to the old poetic, or rhetorical prose with its 
long involved sentences and general lack of definiteness of form. 
This new prose style was due in part to a conscious or uncon- 
scious imitation of French models and in part to the changed 
temper of the age, which was more worldly and prosaic, more 
"practical" as we would say, than the full-blooded, strenuous, 
heroic times of Elizabeth. Indeed, both poetry and prose in the 
Restoration Period show that the old enthusiasm of the nation 
was temporarily exhausted, that men and women were emotion- 
ally tired and wanted a literature of plain, good common sense. 
And so the writers of the day, following the French taste for form 
and thought not above the well-bred man's comprehension, gave 
the public prose and poetry based on "reason and good sense," 



202 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



a phrase much used by French critics. To this clarifying influ- 
ence of French prose upon our own, English literature owes a 
great debt; it was in this period that our literary prose took on 
the modern form. 

A third and less pleasing tendency is to be noted in the new 
literature, namely, vulgar realism in dramatic writing through 
the reflection in the plays of the manners of the corrupt court 
society. The one dominant figure of this period is John Dryden, 
in whom are found all the characteristics of the new literature. 
After considering him, we may briefly notice the minor writers. 
The leading kinds of literature in the Restoration Period are 
Satires, Drama, Criticism, Diaries. 

JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700) 

His Life. — John Dryden, dramatist, satirist, critic, and literary dictator 
of his age, was born at the village of Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, in 
1631. He came of an ancestry of country gentlemen of Puritan sympathies. 
Dryden studied at Westminster School, London, under the famous Dr. 
Busby; in 1650 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took 
his bachelor's degree in 1654. After spending several years at his country 
home, he went up to London and there passed the rest of his life, finding, 
as did most of the writers of that age, the city more congenial than the 
country. His first poem of any consequence, "Heroic Stanzas on the Death 
of Oliver Cromwell," appeared in 1658, the year of Cromwell's death, and 
is a tribute of considerable power to the great Puritan. Two years later 
Dryden welcomed Charles II in a poem of such fulsome flattery that it won 
the favor of the followers of the "merry Monarch," and proved the first 
step towards fortune and fame. In 1663 Dryden married Lady Elizabeth 
Howard, sister of the dramatist, Sir Robert Howard, and daughter of a 
well-known nobleman. Though this marriage did not prove a particularly 
happy one, it brought Dryden into greater social prominence and thereby 
helped to advance his fortunes. In 1660 the theaters were opened again 
after years of Puritan prohibition, and there was a consequent demand for 
new plays in harmony with the changed taste; whereupon Dryden gave 
himself with successful energy to the writing of "heroic tragedies" for the 
Restoration stage. So well did he please the king and the Royalists with 
his plays and with a really vigorous poem, Annus Mirabilis (1667) , that 
in 1670 he was made Poet Laureate and also Historiographer Royal. 



THE RESTORATION PERIOD 



203 




JOHN DRYDEN 



The turning-point of Dryden's life came in 1681, when he published the 
great political satire, Absalom and Achitophel, an attack on the Earl of 
Shaftesbury, leader of the party in opposition to the king who were urging 
the claims of the Duke of Monmouth as Charles's successor. The poem 
appeared at an opportune moment, when the public mind was greatly agi- 
tated in a heated political controversy, and Dryden's satire made a decided 
hit. He had at last, at the age of fifty, discovered his true vein. He 
left off writing dramas and set himself to composing those brilliant political 
and personal satires which established his fame as the most vigorous and 
original writer of his day. He was now looked upon as the champion of 
the court against the enemies of the king, and in return he looked to the 
court for financial aid. Although Dryden had written a poem in defense 
of the Church of England, ReligioLaici (1683), the year before the accession 
of James II, he nevertheless withdrew from the Established Church and 
became a Catholic in 1686, and next year published a poem, the Hind and 
the Panther, in defense of his new faith which was also that of the new king. 
At the Revolution of 1688, which resulted in the dethronement of James II 
and the triumph of Protestantism, Dryden, who did not again change his 



204 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



religion, was deprived of his pension and the laureateship, which was now 
given to his old enemy Shadwell. Undaunted he turned again to play- 
writing, translated Virgil and other Latin poets, introduced Chaucer to 
his readers through a modernized version, and wrote two great odes. During 
these years he used to sit a part of each day in Will's Coffee-House sur- 
rounded by a group of ardent disciples who eagerly drank in every word 
from the acknowledged arbiter of English letters. These last years were 
in many respects the best of his life; he worked steadily and manfully to 
support himself, "struggling with want, oppressed with sickness," as he 
tells us, but not dispirited, he also assures us. Dryden died in 1700, and 
was buried near Chaucer in Westminster Abbey. 

His Personality. — Dryden's 'character is a curiously contra- 
dictory one, as his political and religious vacillations prove: in 
earlier life he eulogizes Oliver Cromwell, then welcomes with 
effusive praise Charles II; a Protestant through Charles's reign, 
he then turns Catholic at fifty-five and remains true to that faith 
the rest of his life ; he writes plays of low moral tone to catch the 
popular taste, and when Collier attacks him in his famous pam- 
phlet on "the immorality and profaneness of the English stage," 
the old poet manfully acknowledges the justice, in the main, of 
the charges. The truth seems to be that Dryden was without 
strong convictions, a typical representative of an age without 
spiritual ideals who persuaded himself, doubtless with little effort, 
that the right lay. on the side of the party in power. He closely 
watched the popular moods and gave the people of London, the 
great majority that followed the royal leading, what they wanted 
at any particular time. 

Yet, in spite of this ignoble time-serving, Dryden was not 
without a certain sturdiness and independence of character which 
the many inconsistencies of his career cannot entirely hide. His 
friends spoke of him as "glorious old John/' and contemporary 
opinion goes to show that he was generous and worthy of confi- 
dence, a man of greater sincerity than his public actions and utter- 
ances would indicate. 1 Real loftiness of character, however, we 

1 Dryden was one of the very few in the Restoration Period who appre- 
ciated the greatness of Milton as a poet. He wrote the famous lines begin- 
ning, "Three poets, in three distant ages born," etc. 



THE RESTORATION PERIOD 



205 



do not expect to find in an era when cleverness of intellect was more 
highly esteemed in literature than moral nobility and imagina- 
tive reach; Dry den the man is as striking an example of the spirit- 
ual limitations of the day as is Dryden the writer. 

His Works and Influence. — Dryden was the most versatile 
writer of his age, expressing himself in verse or prose with equal 
ease and turning from one form of literature to another with re- 
markable facility. He was Dramatist, Satirist, Translator, and 
Critic; and while these four kinds of literary activity do not include 
all his writings, for convenience we may adopt this general classi- 
fication. 

(1) Dramas. Playwriting was a money-making occupation in 
the Restoration Period, and Dryden turned to it with noteworthy 
success about 1663. Within the next eighteen years he wrote 
some twenty plays — tragedies, comedies, tragi-comedies; five 
dramas composed in later life bring the total up to twenty-five. 
In the preface to one of his earlier plays, The Indian Emperor, 
he says: "I confess my chief endeavours are to delight the age in 
which I live. If the humour of this be for low comedy, small 
accidents and raillery, I will force my genius to obey it, though 
with more reputation I could write in verse. " That he did force 
his genius in this species of composition is proved by the fact that 
nobody reads these plays to-day, except specialists, so unworthy 
are they of Dry den's better nature. Only one of them, All for 
Love, an adaptation of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, was 
written, it is said, to please himself; this is in blank verse and is 
worth reading, if for nothing else than to see how inferior the 
dramatic taste of Restoration folk was to that of the Elizabethans. 

(2) Satires. Satire may be defined as that kind of literature 
in which a current form of folly, evil, or incapacity, as exemplified 
in some well-known person, is held up to ridicule. In the Eliza- 
bethan age there were several prominent satirists, such as Hall, 
Marston, and Lodge, who lashed contemporary vice and folly 
after the manner of the great Roman satirists, Horace, Juvenal, 
and Persius, and who, along with Donne just a little later, used 
the rhyming couplet which later grew into the 1 'heroic couplet." 



206 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Dryden was, however, the first writer in our literature to raise 
satire into universal favor as an instrument of stinging personal 
and political warfare. Absalom and Achitophel (1681) was the 
first of Dry den's satires and is in many respects the most powerful. 
The Bible account of the revolt of Absalom and his evil counsellor 
Achitophel against King David is made to fit existing conditions 
in English politics: Achitophel is the Earl of Shaftesbury, able 
but unscrupulous minister, who aids Absalom, the young Duke of 
Monmouth (the king's illegitimate son), in his plans to become 
the successor of King David, or Charles II. Around these leaders 
are grouped their principal sympathizers, chief among whom is 
£imri, the Duke of Buckingham, satirized by Dryden as — 

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, 
Was everything by starts and nothing long, 
But in the course of one revolving moon 
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon. 

Throughout this defense of the king's side, Dryden exposes 
the doings of the hostile faction with merciless irony in stabbing 
couplets. The temper of this famous attack on Shaftesbury, as 
well as the nature of the "heroic couplet," may be seen in the fol- 
lowing portrait of that personage under the name of Achitophel : 

Of these the false Achitophel was first, 
A name to all succeeding ages curst: 
For close designs and crooked counsels fit, 
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit, 
Restless, unfixed in principles and place, 
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace: 
A fiery soul, which, working out its way, 
Fretted the pigmy body to decay 
And o'er informed the tenement of clay. 
A daring pilot in extremity, 

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high 
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit, 
Would steer too near the sands to boast his wit. 
Great wits are sure to madness near allied 
And thin partitions do their bounds divide. 



THE RESTORATION PERIOD 



207 



Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest, 
Refuse his age the needed hours of rest? 
Punish a body which he could not please, 
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease? 
And all to leave what with his toil he won 
To that unfeathered two-legg'd thing, a son. 

So well pleased was the king with the success of Absalom and 
Achitophel that he encouraged Dry den to publish the next year 
another satire, The Medal, making a further attack on Shaftes- 
bury. To this the Whigs, through Shadwell, a poet and dramatist 
of their political faith and one of Dryden's rivals, replied. Then 
Dryden wrote MacFlecknoe, a caustic attack on Shadwell, whom 
he represents as a candidate for the throne of Nonsense, lately 
made vacant by the death of a second-rate Irish poet named 
Richard Plecknoe. By Mac-Flecknoe Dryden meant to call 
Shadwell the son of this obscure poet. In this satire occur the 
oft-quoted lines: 

The rest to some faint meaning make pretense, 
But Shadwell never deviates into sense; 
Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, 
Strike through, and make a lucid interval; 
But ShadwelPs genuine night admits no ray, 
His rising fogs prevail upon the day. 

It should be said in justice to Shadwell that he was not in fact 
the hopelessly stupid character that Dryden represents him to be; 
but this exceedingly clever satire caused him to be laughed out 
of reputation and he has come down to posterity in this vivid 
word-portrait of Dryden's. In his ability at satirical character- 
delineation Dryden has never been excelled, not even by his dis- 
ciple, Alexander Pope, in the next century. 

(3) Translations and Adaptations. Dryden translated Virgil's 
Aeneid, selections from various other classic poets, stories from 
the Italian writer Boccaccio, into English verse. Besides this, 
he made an adaptation of Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" under the 
name, of Palamon and Arcite. This volume of selections, which 



208 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



he published as Fables, or stories, is one of Dryden's most pleasing 
works, while his translation of Virgil became widely popular. 

(4) Criticisms. In the prefaces to his plays and poems Dry den 
has left us some of the most valuable prose criticism in our litera- 
ture, expressed in clear, terse, vigorous language and showing 
his good sense, wide reading, and fine power of discrimination. 
His famous Essay of Dramatic Poesy remains one of the standard 
pieces of literary criticism in our language. 

Not included in the four classes just enumerated are his two 
poems, Religio Laid and the Hind and the Panther, the first in 
defense of the Church of England, and the second in praise of 
the Church of Rome; Annus Mirabilis ("The Wonderful Year"), 
celebrating the victories over the Dutch and giving an account 
of the great fire of London (1666); and his famous lyrics, "Ode 
for St. Cecilia's Day" and "Alexander's Feast." These two odes, 
while wanting the natural charm of a Wordsworth ode, have high 
artistic merit and serve to illustrate how well Dryden could now 
and then rise into a region above satire and criticism. 

Dryden's distinctive contribution to English literature is three- 
fold : first, the employment of satire with such vigor and originality 
through the "heroic couplet" as the unit of expression that this 
form of verse became the prevailing one in the eighteenth century; 
second, the introduction of a sounder method of literary criticism, 
more dispassionate and less under the tyranny of ancient rules; 
and third, a more direct and natural prose made up of shorter 
sentences as units of thought, and essentially modern. 

Butler's Hudibras. — An immensely popular work among the 
Royalists was Hudibras, a satirical poem against the Puritans by 
Samuel Butler (1612-1680), private secretary to a Puritan jus- 
tice during the Commonwealth and later on secretary to the Lord 
President of Wales. Hudibras is loosely modeled on Don Quixote, 
the Puritan knight Sir Hudibras and his squire Ralpho passing 
through a series of mildly quixotic adventures which suggest the 
grotesque experiences of the Spanish knight and his man Sancho 
Panza. Butler's work heaps ridicule upon Puritan intolerance 
and sanctimoniousness by lampooning virtues as well as vices. 



THE RESTORATION PERIOD 



209 



It is a scurrilous attack on the discredited Puritans by a repre- 
sentative of the court party. The clever hitting off of certain 
oddities of manner and speech, with gross exaggeration, in short 
rhyming couplets made Hudibras a sort of comic political and social 
pamphlet of the day which the Royalists read with keen enjoy- 
ment. Everybody quoted the pungent sentences of this mock- 
heroic poem which so mercilessly pilloried the Puritans. Without 
any special literary merit, Hudibras would have been forgotten 
except for the many proverbial sayings it contained which stuck 
in the common speech and so have come down to us, while the 
poem as a whole long ago ceased to interest. Here are a few of 
the striking couplets: 

He that runs may fight again, 
Which he can never do that's slain. 

He that complies against his will 
Is of his own opinion still. 

Opinion governs all mankind, 

Like the blind's leading of the blind. 

He was in logic a great critic, 

Profoundly skilled in analytic: 

He could distinguish, and divide 

A hair 'twixt south and south-west side; 

On either which he would dispute, 

Confute, change hands, and still confute. 

For he was of that stubborn crew 
Of errant Saints, whom all men grant 
To be the true Church Militant; 
Such as do build their faith upon 
The holy text of pike and gun; 
Decide all controversies by 
Infallible artillery; 
And prove their doctrine orthodox 
By apostolic blows and knocks. 

The Dramatists. — Besides Dryden, there were a number of 
other dramatists in the Restoration Period, and these may be 



210 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



divided into two groups, the writers of Tragedy and the writers 
of Comedy. 

(1) Restoration Tragedy: " Heroic Plays." The tragic dram- 
atists were influenced by the old Elizabethan traditions and 
to some extent by French tragedy as perfected by Corneille and 
Racine. They usually chose some ancient or mediaeval hero 
and made the plot revolve about him. As the characters were 
greatly heightened and the scene magnified to almost superhuman 
proportions, these dramas came to be known as "heroic plays." 
Often, indeed, the speeches were exceedingly stilted, the veriest 
rant and fustian, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 
That is true in some of Dryden's tragedies, while it is a leading 
characteristic of the plays of Nathaniel Lee, one of the most 
gifted of Restoration playwrights, who led a dissipated life 
and died insane at the age of thirty-seven. Most of these 
tragedies were highly artificial, their plots well-nigh impossible, 
and the rhetorical nature of the dialogue was intensified by the 
use of rhyming couplets. The best of the group was THOMAS 
OTWAY (1651-1685), who died young, worn out by a struggle with 
poverty after turning from acting to playwriting. Two of Otway's 
dramas, The Orphan and Venice Preserved, have genuine merit 
and continued to be favorites on the stage long after their author's 
death. Venice Preserved shows genuine passion, something of 
Elizabethan fire and grandeur. Otway at his best excelled 
Dryden in naturalness of plot and character and in depth of 
feeling. 

(2) Restoration Comedy : The Comedy of Manners. Res- 
toration comedy is a realistic reflection of the manners and talk 
of the upper classes of that age. We have seen how in Ben Jonson's 
comedies the "humors," or peculiar dispositions, of individuals 
and social groups were realistically set forth, and how a little 
later Shirley, the last of the Elizabethan dramatists, depicted in 
his plays the speech and interests of fashionable London society. 
These earlier and cruder examples of social comedy were followed 
in the Restoration era by a genuine Comedy of Manners in which 
current modes of life, dress, and conversation were reproduced 



THE RESTORATION PERIOD 



211 



with almost startling realism. The influence of the brilliant 
comedy of Moliere who was writing and acting in Paris at this 
time, is shown in these Restoration plays. The first of the group, 
Sir George Etherege, had spent much time in Paris and had seen 
Moliere's comedies acted; Wycherley, court favorite and successor 
of Etherege, owed something to Moliere in the structure of his 
plots. These new comedies were usually in prose, whereas the 
old romantic comedy of Shakespeare was in verse. 

The most brilliant of the writers of Restoration comedy was 
WILLIAM CONGREVE (1670-1729), whose masterpieces, Love for 
Love and The Way of the World, appeared in 1695 and 1700 re- 
spectively. Brilliancy of dialogue makes up for improbability 
of plot which is generally a love intrigue; lifelike characters, 
sparkling wit, clever verbal fence, external polish, internal rotten- 
ness, distinguish these plays. In artistic finish and superficial 
brilliancy the prose of Congreve has not been surpassed, indeed, 
scarcely equaled: the witty, corrupt, scintillating talk of men 
and women of polite society disporting themselves at the theater, 
the coffee-house, in the drawing-rooms, in gardens and pleasure 
parks of London, is the subject matter of this highly finished 
prose. All the sacred institutions of life, particularly marriage, 
are flippantly treated, made the subjects of cynical jest, while 
thinly-veiled allusion invests the whole with an atmosphere of 
indecency. The coarseness of Vanbrugh is less refined than that 
of Wycherley, but in Farquhar, the last of the group, there is a 
healthier tone, his Beaux 1 Stratagem containing some genuine fun 
and wholesome characters. 

The Restoration comedies became so unbearable that in 1698 
the Reverend Jeremy Collier published his now famous pamphlet 
on the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage, This 
timely attack had its effect and the next decade brought a change 
for the better in the English drama. The corrupt Restoration 
dramatists have been treated with well-merited neglect by suc- 
cessive generations of readers. 

The Diarists: Pepys and Evelyn. — Ordinarily diaries do not 
belong to literature proper, but whenever such a daily record 



212 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



reveals the experiences and observations of an interesting person- 
ality in a preeminently social age, it claims our attention as a 
human document in any adequate account of the making of litera- 
ture. Two men of the Restoration Period have left such records, 
Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. Samuel Pepys was a busy man 
of practical affairs who held various government positions, the 
most important of which was that of Secretary to the Admiralty, 
or Navy Department. For ten years (1660-1669) Pepys kept a 
diary in a cipher, or shorthand, of his own, which was not trans- 
lated until 1825. The manuscript of this diary, together with 
other manuscripts and a large collection of books and pictures, 
he left at his death to Magdalen College, Cambridge University, 
his alma mater, where they are now kept in a separate library. 

Pepys' Diary is perhaps the most remarkable piece of minute 
self-revelation known to historians. Pepys was interested in 
everything, from the gossip of servants, the latest fashion, the 
newest play, to affairs of State and the scandals of court society. 
He sets down without reserve his inmost thoughts on this person, 
that incident, the other experience, and so on in endless detail, 
chattering along under the cover of his secret cipher. But this 
garrulous gossip has given us an invaluable storehouse of interest- 
ing information about the society of his time, and in so doing 
he unconsciously illustrated that love of realistic portraiture out 
of which in the next century the novel was to be born. Several 
extracts from the Diary will give a better idea of Pepys and his 
method than pages of description : 

October 13, 1660. — I went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-General 
Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking 
as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut 
down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great 
shouts of joy. . . . Thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at White- 
hall, and to see the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King at 
Charing Cross. From thence to my Lord's, and took Captain Cuttance 
and Mr. Sheply to the Sun Tavern, and did give them some oysters. After 
that I went by water home, where I was angry with my wife for her things 
lying about, and in my passion kicked the little fine basket, which I bought 
her in Holland, and broke it, which troubled me after I had done it. 



THE RESTORATION PERIOD 



213 



December 28, 1663.— Walking through White Hall I heard the King was 
gone to play at tennis, so I down to the New Tennis Court, and saw him and 
Sir Arthur Slingsby play against my Lord of Suffolke and my Lord Chester- 
field. The King beat three, and lost two sets, they all, and he particularly 
playing well, I thought. Thence went and spoke with the Duke of Albe- 
marle about his wound at Newhall, but I find him a heavy dull man, me- 
thinks, by his answers to me. 

January 1, 1664. — At the Coffee-house, where much talking about a very 
rich widow, young and handsome, of one Sir Nicholas Gold's, a merchant, 
lately fallen, and of great courtiers that already look after her: her husband 
not dead a week yet. She is reckoned worth 80,000 pounds. Went to the 
Duke's Theatre, the first play I have been at these six months, according 
to my last vowe, and here saw the so much cried-up play of Henry the 
Eighth; which, though I went with resolution to like it, is so simple a thing 
made up of a great many patches, that, besides the shows and processions 
in it, there is nothing in the world good or well done. 

May 1, 1669. — Up betimes. My wife extraordinary fine with her flowered 
tabby gown that she made two years ago, now laced exceeding pretty. And 
mighty earnest to go, though the day was very lowering; and she would 
have me put on my fine suit, which I did. And so anon we went alone 
through the town with our new liveries of serge, and the horses' manes 
and tails tied with red ribbons, and the standards thus gilt with varnish, 
and all clean, and green reines, that people did look mightily upon us; and 
the truth is, I did not see any coach more pretty, though more gay, than 
ours all the day. 

Two of the most interesting entries in Pepys' Diary are those 
relating to the coronation of Charles II and the great fire of London 
in 1666 from which Pepys was himself a sufferer. Indeed, there 
are few more readable books in our literature before the rise of 
the modern novel than this personal record of Samuel Pepys. 

Of less intimate character is the Diary of John Evelyn, traveler, 
scholar, favorite of Charles II, and like Pepys a member of the 
Royal Society of London. Evelyn was a man of dignity and purity 
of character, "a good man in difficult times," and his Diary f 
covering the years from 1640 to 1706, is a mine of valuable and 
precise information in an age when English society and politics 
were undergoing radical changes. The effect of these changes 



214 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



is still more marked in the literature of the early eighteenth 
century, when "prose and reason" triumphed over imagination 
and sentiment. 

THE PERIOD IN OUTLINE (1660-1700) 



LITERATURE 

John Dryden (1631-1700), Satirist, 

Dramatist, Translator, Critic 
Restoration Dramatists ("Comedy 
of Manners"): Congreve, Wych- 
erley, Vanbrugh 
Butler's Hudibras (1663) 
Pepys's Diary (1660-1669) 
Evelyn's Diary (1640-1706) 
Collier's Attack on the Stage, 1698 



HISTORY 

Reign of Charles (Restoration) 
1660-1685 

Reign of James II, 1685-88 

Revolution, 1688 

William and Mary, 1689-1702 

Plague and Fire of London, 1665-66 

Newton's Proof of Law of Gravita- 
tion, 1687 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTCS :— Reaction from Puritanism; French 
influence ; beginnings of Classicism. 



SOME USEFUL BOOKS 

Historical. — Hale's The Fall of the Stuarts, Airy's The English Restora- 
tion and Louis XIV, Macaulay's History of England, vol. I, chap. 3 (brilliant 
account of social conditions). 

Literary. — Garnett's The Age of Dryden (Macmillan), Wendell's Temper 
of the Seventeenth Century in English Literature, Dowden's Puritan and 
Anglican, Gosse's From Shakespeare to Pope, Hazlitt's Lectures on the 
English Comic Writers (Everyman's Library), Globe edition of Dry den's 
Works, Saintsbury's Life of Dryden (English Men of Letters), Pepys's 
Diary (Everyman's Library), Plays of Restoration Dramatists in Mermaid 
Series. 



CHAPTER EIGHT 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
1700-1740 

THE AGE OF POPE: CLASSICISM 

A Social Age.— The Age of Queen Anne, as the earlier part 
of the eighteenth century is often called, was in its literature and 
manners simply a continuation and expansion of the Restoration 
Period. The influence of the court on literature was less, but 
the city continued to be the center of literary interest: the writers 
lived in the town, wrote for the town and about the town, por- 
traying in very great detail the society of the town. It was above 
all else a social age, in which urbanity of manner counted for more 
than depth of thought or sincerity of conviction. The moral 
tone was low, manifesting itself in coarseness of speech and in 
other forms of disregard of the proprieties of life. Gambling and 
drinking were prevalent vices; the laws were poorly enforced; 
all sorts of swindling schemes flourished; highwaymen made unsafe 
the public highways, while riotous gangs of young men calling 
themselves "Mohawks" often attacked pedestrians in the London 
streets at night, playing upon men and women rude practical 
jokes. The streets of London were narrow, badly paved, and 
because of their reeking gutters often very unsanitary. The 
population of the city at this time was hardly more than half a 
million; for that very reason the dwellers in the city proper could 
get together in a social way not possible in the vast London of 
to-day when the center of the town has been given over to business 
houses. 

The most noteworthy centers of social contact were the coffee- 
houses, the clubs, the theaters, and the various public parks and 

1215] 



216 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



pleasure gardens, like St. James Park and Vauxhall Gardens. 
Coffee-houses and clubs had very largely superseded the taverns of 
Shakespeare's day as meeting-places for men of wit. Will's Cof- 
fee-house, where Dryden laid down laws for the literary world, 
continued to be the popular resort of literary men, while others 
were the favorite meeting-places of politicians, lawyers, and clergy- 
men. The merchants, who composed the great and increasingly 
prosperous middle class,, had their coffee-houses and clubs as 
well, important centers for discussion of municipal and commercial 
matters. At this time there were in England about three thousand 
of these various coffee-houses besides all sorts of clubs, from the 
exclusive Kit-Cat Club to the lower taverns, where little social 
groups of congenial companions drank, smoked, and gossiped. 
The most famous of these were of course in the heart of London. 
At the principal theaters, Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the 
Haymarket, all classes assembled to hear a new comedy by Con- 
greve, or Cibber, or Steele. 

Rise of Periodical Literature. — Such great social activity meant 
a large class of readers who demanded entertainment from lighter 
forms of literature than the old standard kinds. To supply this 
demand various journals came into existence, some to furnish 
foreign or domestic news, others court news, some to concern 
themselves with dramatic criticism, others to comment upon 
the manners of the day. The age was one of great material 
prosperity, superficial refinement, and literary versatility. The 
first daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, began in 1702, a single 
sheet eight by fourteen inches; Defoe started his Review in 1704. 
Numerous weekly and monthly periodicals were born in the first 
decade of the eighteenth century, but most of these died an early 
death; the popularity of several of these journals, however, proved 
that henceforth this form of literature was to engage the atten- 
tion of aspiring young authors. The bounds of literature were 
about to be enlarged by the inclusion of the periodical essay, 
which is the literary offspring of a quickened social sense. The 
most famous of the periodical essays of this age were the Tatler 
and the Spectator, written for the most part by Richard Steele 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 217 



and Joseph Addison, of which some account will be given presently. 
Magazines and newspapers — those great agencies for populariz- 
ing knowledge — had their beginnings in this period of social and 
political interests, and by helping to make literature more demo- 
cratic prepared the way for the novel. 

Classicism, or Literary Conformity. — We have already seen 
how predominant in our literature during the latter part of the 
seventeenth century was the French influence, resulting in the 
loss of high imagination in poetry and prose and in the gain of 
greater exactness of expression and polish of form. Emotion died 
out of literature; reason, logic, common sense, restraint, outward 
finish, took the place of inspiration and originality. This con- 
formity to French models is called Classicism, because the French 
critics based their rules very largely on the laws laid down by the 
Roman writers of the Augustan Age. Because of this imitation 
of the manner of the French writers of the seventeenth century, 
who were themselves imitators of the Golden Age Latin poets, 
Horace and Virgil, the earlier part of the eighteenth century is 
often called the "Augustan Age" of English literature. Poetry 
showed little or no genuine creative power; as compared with the 
Elizabethan, indeed, it was positively artificial; but there was a 
decided gain in correctness of form and finish. Passion and imagi- 
nation, the wings on which really great poetry soars into a higher 
realm, are not to be found in the poetry of this chilly age of author- 
ity and regularity. 

Still, viewed in the light of its later development, English poetry 
profited from this restraining formal influence of Classicism. 
English prose certainly received a very positive benefit. Our 
older prose, like modern German prose, was wanting in the defi- 
niteness and lucidity which characterized French prose; and the 
discipline through which it passed in the eighteenth century gave 
it such precision and flexibility that henceforth it was to be adapted 
to a wide range of expression. The eighteenth century is pre- 
eminently a prose century; not until then was there a distinctive, 
serviceable prose style in which various kinds of literature might 



218 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



find utterance — the character sketch, the essay, history, satire, 
oratory, and above all, the novel. 

Political Activity. — Between politics and literature there was 
a more vital relationship in the eighteenth century than had ever 
existed before, many of the prose writers having some sort of 
connection with political life. Addison, for instance, was in poli- 
tics most of his life, finally rising to the office of Secretary of State. 
Literature had become more democratic since the reading public 
had grown so large and varied in this social and industrial age of 
coffee-houses and clubs; the government of England had also grown 
more democratic since the days of the Stuarts and their outworn 
theories about the "divine rights of kings." William III had 
come to the throne in 1688, ruling conjointly with Mary his wife 
by Parliamentary enactment. Virtually receiving his throne 
from Parliament, he was naturally a constitutional monarch; 
henceforth England was to be governed by parties and cabinets 
which should find their popular representation in the House of 
Commons. 

During the reign of Queen Anne the party system steadily 
developed, and the government was administered now by the 
Tories, now by the Whigs. The Tories were the conservatives, 
the political successors of the Cavaliers, or Royalists, favoring 
the royal authority and the supremacy of the Established 
Church; the Whigs were the liberals, in favor of constitutional 
government and the right of religious dissent. So permeated is 
the literature of the time with the controversies between these 
two parties that some knowledge of political conditions is essen- 
tial to an understanding of it. Of all the political figures of the 
day around whom controversies were fiercely waged the most 
conspicuous is the Duke of Marlborough, the great general who 
fought in the campaigns against France. He looms large in the 
poetry and prose of the Age of Queen Anne. His series of brilliant 
victories increased the prestige of England abroad, aroused great 
national enthusiasm, and stimulated the production of patriotic 
literature. 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 219 



I. PROSE LITERATURE 

The first forty years of the eighteenth century witnessed the 
production of a large body of prose literature consisting of the 
Periodical Essay of Addison and Steele, the Satires of Swift, 
and the Narratives and Pamphlets of Defoe. Although Defoe's 
life falls within this period, it seems best to consider his work in 
connection with the discussion of the English Novel a little later, 
for his narratives of adventure belong to the beginnings of that 
important literary form. The most influential prose of this period 
and, all things considered, the most typical of social and political 
conditions, is the Periodical Essay as perfected by Joseph Addison 
and Richard Steele. 

JOSEPH ADDISON 1 (1672-1719) 

His Life. — Joseph Addison was born at Milston, Wiltshire, May 1, 1672. 
His father, the Rev. Launcelot Addison, was a man of literary tastes and 
author of several works. Joseph was educated at the famous Charter House 
School in London and at the University of Oxford. He entered Queen's 
College, Oxford, at the age of fifteen, and after a residence of two years 
there, moved to Magdalen College on the same street and along the banks 
of the beautiful Cherwell. In these historic surroundings Addison passed 
eleven or twelve years, remaining at the University six years after he had 
taken his master's degree in 1693. He spent his time reading the classics, 
translating parts of Virgil and Ovid, and writing verses in honor of the poet 
Dryden and King William. His favorite walk was under the elms along 
the peaceful Cherwell in the grounds of Magdalen College; this charming 
pathway between the rows of stately trees is still known as " Addison's 
Walk." It looked as if the young scholar might enter the Church or become 
an Oxford don, for he had been made a Fellow of Magdalen College. But 
there were other and quite different experiences awaiting the young man. 
The old poet Dryden introduced Addison to Congreve the dramatist, and 
he in turn presented him to Charles Montague, later Lord Halifax, whom 
Addison had praised in one or two poems. Montague obtained a traveling 
pension for him in order that he might fit himself through foreign travel 
for the diplomatic service. Accordingly, in 1699 Addison left Oxford for the 
continent. 



l Parts of this discussion of Addison and Steele are taken from the author's edition of the 
Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, published by the B. F. Johnson Publishing Company. 



220 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 




JOSEPH ADDISON 



He spent four years in travel and in study. Meanwhile a new sovereign 
had come to the throne, the Tories were in power, and Addison's pension 
was gone, for he belonged to the Whig party. Turning to literature for a 
support, Addison wrote an account of his travels and did such hack work 
as he could find. At this critical time his old friend Montague recommended 
him to the Lord Treasurer, Godolphin, as a young poet who could celebrate 
in fitting verse the Duke of Marlborough's recent victory at Blenheim. 
Addison gladly set to work on a patriotic poem, which he soon had ready. 
This was "The Campaign," in which Marlborough is glorified as the aveng- 
ing angel upon England's foes. The poem was immensely popular and Addi- 
son's political fortune was assured. 

The remainder of Addison's life was given to political service and to 
literature. He held various offices under the government, was elected to 
Parliament, and two years before his death became Secretary of State. 
Throughout these years of participation in public affairs Addison's liter- 
ary activity continued. He was a regular contributor to The Tatler, which 
his friend and schoolmate Richard Steele had begun in 1709. His best 
prose work is to be found in The Spectator. Besides these and other periodi- 
cal essays in The Guardian and The Freeholder, Addison wrote a successful 
tragedy called Cato, which his contemporaries admired much more than sue- 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 221 



ceeding generations have. In 1716 Addison married the Countess Dowager 
of Warwick and went to live at Holland House just out of London; and 
while this marriage may have increased his social pre.stige, it did not, if 
reports be correct, add to his felicity. In the company of a few congenial 
friends at his coffee-house Addison doubtless found during these last years 
his greatest happiness. On June 17, 1719, he died at Holland House and 
was buried in Westminster Abbey by the side of his ''loved Montague.'* 




MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD 



His Personality .—Addison's literary contemporaries, Pope and 
Swift, testify to the charm of his conversation when he was at 
his ease with one or two congenial companions and to his general 
popularity; in a larger company he was apt to be silent. Pope 
said that Addison's conversation had something in it more charm- 
ing than he had found in the talk of any other man; Swift, one 
of the most jealous of men, wrote to Stella that "Mr. Addison is 
a most excellent person." He was, indeed, universally popular 
in an age of bitter partisanship. Though he was no speaker, he 
was repeatedly elected to Parliament and appointed without 
personal solicitation to important offices of State. Though a 
Whig, he was once or twice returned to Parliament by Tory votes. 
Swift wrote to Steele: "I believe if he had a mind to be chosen 



222 



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king, he would hardly be refused." Somewhat proud, very sen- 
sitive, reserved and self-conscious, it may appear strange that 
Addison was popular; but at heart he was one of the kindest, 
most sympathetic of men. His was the scholar's austerity, and 
his very dignity and silence inspired confidence, while his freedom 
from party bitterness gave him a certain judicial poise. To his 
purity of character were added the urbanity of good breeding, 
the courage of real conviction, and the sensibility of genius. 

His Works: Poems and The Spectator. — Addison wrote a 
number of poems and his age esteemed him highly as a poet, but 
save for a few ornate passages and a hymn or two, later genera- 
tions have forgotten his poetry. The "Campaign," written in 
1704 to celebrate Marlborough's famous victory, contains the 
well-known comparison of the great warrior to an angel: 

So when an angel by divine command 
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land 
(Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed), 
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; 
And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, 
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm. 

The soliloquy of Cato in the tragedy of that name is made up 
of really majestic lines, though the drama as a whole has little 
merit. Cato in the fifth act is represented as sitting with Plato's 
book on the immortality of the soul in his hand and a drawn sword 
on the table near him and beginning thus: 

It must be so — Plato, thou reason'st well — 

Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 

This longing after immortality? 

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, 

Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul 

Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 

'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 

*Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter* 

And intimates eternity to man. 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 223 



Lines from Addison's great hymn on nature are often quoted 
and sung with, solemn effect, for the stanzas have a splendid 
movement: 

The spacious firmament on high 
With all the blue ethereal sky 
And spangled heavens, a shining frame, 
Their great original proclaim. 
Th' unwearied sun from day to day 
Does his Creator's power display; 
And publishes to every land 
The work of an Almighty hand. 

It is Addison's prose, however, that has given him a place 
among the masters of our language and literature. Together 
with his friend Richard Steele he raised the popular periodical 
essay to the dignity of literature. In 1709 Steele had begun the 
publication of The Tatler, and to this Addison became a contribu- 
tor. So successful was Steele's venture (of which a full account 
will be given under Steele's works) that two years afterward 
he planned, together with Addison, a new periodical of wider 
range. This was The Spectator, to which Addison was the leading 
contributor. The Spectator began March 1, 1711, and appeared 
six times a week until December 6, 1712. After an intermission 
of about a year and a half, Addison revived The Spectator, issuing 
it three times a week, and wrote for it alone until its discontinu- 
ance, December 20, 1714. Of the six hundred and thirty-five 
numbers in the two series, two hundred and seventy-four were 
written by Addison, two hundred and thirty-six by Steele; the 
rest were contributed by political and literary friends of the two 
men. 

The contents of the little daily paper were varied: stories, 
character sketches, literary and dramatic criticism, playful social 
satire, penetrating comments on morality and religion. The 
Spectator was laid daily upon the breakfast tables of the citizens 
of London, and read as they sipped their coffee or tea. It was 
not a newspaper, though it did contain a number of advertise- 
ments of entertainments, patent medicines, and the like; it was 



224 



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usually a little morning lecture or commentary on social or liter- 
ary ethics. The purpose of The Spectator was distinctly ethical, 
as explained by Addison himself: 

"Since I have raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains 
to make their instruction agreeable, and their diversion useful. For which 
reason I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit and to temper wit 
with morality .... And to the end that their virtue and discretion may 
not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to re" 
fresh their memories from day to day till I have recovered them out 

of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age is fallen 

The mind that lies fallow but a single day sprouts up in follies that are 
only to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture. It was said of 
Socrates that he brought Philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among 
men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought 
Philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in 
clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses." 

Sir Roger de Coverley. The parts of The Spectator most read 
and loved to-day are the thirty-odd selections known collectively 
as The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, The characters who figure 
in these papers are members of an imaginary club to which the 
Spectator himself belongs. The central figure is Sir Roger de 
Coverley, a typical, old-fashioned country gentleman of the eight- 
eenth century, endeared to us by his eccentricities, his prejudices, 
his touch of superstition, and his rusticity, all of which only serve 
to give color to his large humanity. We would not willingly 
forget such scenes as the old knight in the midst of the congre- 
gation on Sunday, his visit to the theater and the comments on 
the play, his troubles with the perverse widow, his visit to West- 
minster Abbey and his remarks on the worthies buried there, and 
his moral reflections in Vauxhall Gardens. Sir Roger is one of 
the unforgettable portraits in our imaginative literature. Grouped 
around him are other characters more or less clearly drawn: Sir 
Andrew Freeport, the prosperous London merchant and the de- 
voted Whig who dislikes the Tory principles of Sir Roger; Captain 
Sentry, the military man, with his campaign stories; the country 
clergyman who trims his theology to please his patron Sir Roger; 
and Will Honeycomb, the fop and fortune hunter, who finally 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 225 



weds a plain country girl and settles down to a quiet life. These 
minor personages of the club are employed to bring out more 
distinctly the engaging traits of Sir Roger and to give plausibility 
to the doings and sayings of the little group. 

Addison's Style and Influence. — Addison succeeded, as no one 
before him had done, in writing prose that was at once idiomatic 
and polished. It is the easy, familiar, but refined style of the 
well-bred man of the world, who is at the same time something of 
the scholar. It is not a vigorous style, not epigrammatic. "He 
thinks justly," said Dr. Johnson, "but he thinks faintly." Addi- 
son perceived the possibilities of prose as a medium of artistic 
expression, with the result that he has left us some of the clearest 
and most graceful prose in the language. "Whoever wishes," 
says Johnson in an oft-quoted passage, "to attain an English 
style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, 
must give his days and nights to the study of Addison." He 
refined and polished his periods, taking great pains to express 
himself in a lucid manner. His sense for words is discriminating, 
and his appreciation of the telling adjustment of phrases is evi- 
dent to the trained ear. Elegance and urbanity mark the style 
of Addison. 

His contribution to our literature is noteworthy: (1) He and 
Steele introduced the light personal essay which was destined to 
become an important literary form; (2) the delightful character 
sketches of the Sir Roger de Coverley type contributed to the 
rise of the modern novel a little later; (3) by reconciling wit and 
virtue he gave a healthier moral tone to literature; and (4) he 
has left us a series of charming pictures of eighteenth-century 
social life in England. Incidentally, too, Addison made valuable 
contributions to the art of literary criticism through his papers 
on the style and diction of Milton, pointing out to his countrymen 
the beauties in certain neglected masterpieces. But above such 
considerations as style and influence is the more vital matter of 
reading Addison for pure enjoyment. After two hundred years, 
those who love The Spectator best think of Addison not as a classic, 



226 



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but as a friend. His volumes are among the great companionable 
books of our literature. 

RICHARD STEELE (1672-1729) 

His Life. — Richard Steele, familiarly known as Dick Steele, was born in 
Dublin in 1672, the birth year of his friend and associate, Joseph Addison. 
Left an orphan at an early age, Steele was sent by an uncle to the Charter 
House School in London, where he met Addison, and later to Oxford. After 
a few years at the University, where he was an indifferent student, Steele 
went to London and joined the Horse Guards, playing soldier for ten years. 
While a member of this military organization he wrote a devotional manual 
called The Christian Hero, besides a play or two. He also attracted the 
attention of Lord Cutts, a well-known military man of the day, who intro- 
duced him to the wits and men of letters at the coffee-houses. During the 
next few years Steele wrote other plays, was made Official Gazetteer, and 
became a prominent figure in the literary life of London. 

In 1709 Steele began the publication of The Tatler; two years later he 
planned with Addison a new journal of manners, letters, and morals, The 
Spectator. So great was the success of these two periodicals that he started 
others after the popularity of the original two had waned, but his later 
ventures were not successful because of their partisan tone. Steele now 
became an active politician, held several minor offices, was elected to 
Parliament, knighted, was sent on royal business to Scotland, and took 
part in various political movements of the day. He and Addison had a 
disagreement over a bill in Parliment about limiting the number of Peers, 
and bitterly attacked each other in rival journals. After Addison's death 
however, Steele's affection for his old friend showed itself in a generous 
tribute to his memory. The later years of his life were spent in promoting 
certain schemes for the public welfare and for his own private fortune. The 
estate left by his wife, who died 1718, was in Wales, and of this estate Steele 
wished to leave something intact to his children. He went to look after this 
property at Carmarthen in Wales; and there in 1729 he died and was buried. 

His Personality. — Steele's father was English, his mother 
Irish; and in the son there was a curious blending of national 
traits, but the Irish were more pronounced. Impulsive, careless, 
inconsistent, warm-hearted, improvident, Steele was one of those 
characters who get close to the human heart. "His life was 
spent in sinning and repenting," says Macaulay; "in inculcating 
what was right, and doing what was wrong." He was one of the 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 227 



most delightful companions in the London society of his day ; but 
when his temper was aroused he could be one of the most caustic 
of critics. His humor was more rollicking and his pathos more 
moving than Addison's, as his wisdom was more genial than that 
of his serene and restrained friend. His vitality was as buoyant 
as his sympathies were broad; he entered with whole-hearted 
enjoyment into the life about him, a man of action with an immense 
capacity for social intercourse. He was courageous, with an in- 
stinct for social and political reform, a chivalrous defender of 
woman in an age of lax morals, a loyal friend, a good father and 
husband. What particularly impresses the student of Steele's 
life is the man's ceaseless activity, his abounding energy; and 
with it all there goes that saving irrepressible good nature, 
that human quality, which has made the world love him, if it 
does not revere him. 

Steele's Works: Comedies and The Tatler. — Steele wrote four 
comedies with a moral purpose, the most important of these being 
The Conscious Lovers, which appeared in 1722, These plays mark 
the beginnings of that species of drama termed "sentimental 
comedy, " the purpose of which was to give a moral and emotional 
tone to plays as opposed to the dissolute and cynical atmosphere 
of the Restoration Comedy of Manners, against which Jeremy 
Collier had successfully inveighed in 1698. But notwithstanding 
the temporary success of these comedies, Steele was not a drama- 
tist, and posterity has all but forgotten that the lively essayist 
also wrote sentimental plays. 

The fame of Sir Richard Steele rests almost entirely upon the 
periodical essays known collectively as The Tatler. Steele knew 
the town intimately and loved to mingle freely with the passing 
throngs of London life. He well understood their wants, he felt 
keenly enough his own pecuniary needs, and he had an ambition, 
no doubt, to enter a field whence he might exert a wider influence. 
Accordingly, on April 12, 1709, Steele issued the first number of 
The Tatler under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff, a name 
which he borrowed from Swift. The little double-column sheet 
was published three times a week up to January 2, 1711, at one 



228 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



penny a copy. Of the two hundred and seventy-one numbers 
issued Steele wrote one hundred and eighty-eight, Addison wrote 
forty-two. The rest were contributed by friends, or by Addison 
and Steele together. The statement prefixed to the first collected 
volume of papers from The Tatler indicates the scope and the 
purpose of the undertaking: 

The general purpose of this paper is to expose the false arts of life, to 
pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recommend 
a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour. 

The popularity of The Tatler led, as we have seen, to the es- 
tablishment a little later of The Spectator. These two little papers 
lived only a few years as current periodicals, but they were the 
beginning of that vast magazine literature which has played so 
important a part in our social, literary, and political history. 
Steele was a somewhat hasty, careless writer; he was natural, 
vivacious, humorous, and never dull. His style is not as finished 
as Addison's, nor can he rise to the heights to which Addison 
sometimes attains; but the credit of originating an immensely 
vital form of literature really belongs to Steele. Addison en" 
larged and perfected what Steele had begun. 

JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745) 

His Life. — Jonathan Swift, the greatest prose-satirist in English liter- 
ature, was born in Dublin in 1667 of English parentage. As his father died 
before he was born, Jonathan was taken charge of by an uncle who sent 
him to Kilkenny School, one of the best academies in Ireland, and later 
to Trinity College, Dublin University. Swift was an indifferent student, 
impatient under the restraints of scholastic life and little interested in the 
antiquated methods of study at the university. He read widely, however, 
and gave himself to investigations in a variety of social and political sub- 
jects, out of which his satires were later to develop. In 1689 Swift became 
private secretary to Sir William Temple, a kinsman of his who had a great 
country estate at Moor Park, Surrey, and who was living in scholarly 
retirement after long public service. In the household of Sir William Swift 
saw many distinguished men, and had access to a great library, of which 
he made constant use. Here he met Esther Johnson, then a mere child, 
who was afterwards to enter largely into his life. But the young man's 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 229 



independent spirit could not endure the inferior position in his great kins- 
man's household, where he was often treated as a menial, though not un- 
kindly; he had ambitions for larger recognition. Accordingly, in 1694 he 
left Sir William Temple's service in order to enter the Church. The next 
year or two he spent in Ireland in charge of a little country parish near 
Dublin; he returned to Moor Park in 1696 and remained with Sir William 
Temple as secretary until Temple's death in 1699. Now begins Swift's 
long battle with the world. 

In 1700 he became vicar at Laracor, twenty miles from Dublin, with a 
salary of two hundred and thirty pounds a year and a small country congre- 
gation. This obscure place Swift held for more than ten years. Much of 
his time was spent in London during these years in the society of cour- 
tiers, politicians, and literary men. Originally a Whig, he turned Tory 
and attached himself to Bolingbroke and his colleagues in hope of prefer- 
ment which he had in vain expected from the Whigs. Though prominent 
and even feared in the circles of the great men of the day, and though en- 
dowed with the keenest intellect in England, he failed to receive substantial 
political recognition, while he saw great places in the Church go to less able 
men. 

The years 1710-1713 are those in which he reached his greatest power in 
London political and social life, where he was a genuine autocrat. Ministers 
of State paid court to him as to a dictator, for they feared his tongue and 
his pen. Of the great Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, Swift wrote to 
"Stella" (Esther Johnson): "One thing I warned him of, never to appear 
cold to me, for I would not be treated like a schoolboy." In fashionable 
drawing-rooms he was the center of interest, and few highborn ladies dared 
refuse his request that they sing or play for him, dreading his penetrating 
look, his frown, and his irony. 

The Tories went out of power in 1713, and with their retirement Swift's 
chances of preferment were gone. A disappointed man, he railed with 
bitter satire on his enemies, becoming more violent, even venomous, in 
his attacks. It is likely that he had faint premonitions of that dread malady, 
insanity, which gradually overshadowed his life until its tragic close; and 
this will explain the growing despondency and violence during these years 
in London. This same year, 1713, he was offered and accepted the deanery 
of St. Patrick's, Dublin, a comparatively poor place in the esteem of a man 
who aspired to a bishopric in England. He spent the rest of his life as dean 
of St. Patrick's. 

Three years before he received this appointment, Swift had begun his 
now famous Journal to Stella. This consists of a series of familiar letters 
in the form of a journal written to his former pupil Esther Johnson, in which 
all sorts of playful allusions and personal impressions of people and scenes 
in London served to relieve the usually somber spirit of this lonely man. He 



230 



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throws off the masque of irony and talks confidentially to this woman who 
worshiped him and whom he nicknamed 1 'Stella," "star" of his darkened 
life. This Journal reveals a tenderer heart than the world suspected the 
cold and haughty Dean possessed. Much has been written about Swift's 
relation to Esther Johnson; they may have been secretly married; certainly 
for thirty years Swift was devoted to her, and the association appears to 
have been a blameless one. Another woman, Hester Vanhomrigh, also 
plays a part in the romantic interests of Swift's life. She had been a pupil, 
too, and had been given the poetic name of ' 'Vanessa" by Swift, though no 
warm attachment existed between the two. It is commonly said that 
Swift's blunt indifference, together with the impression that he was 
married to "Stella," killed Hester Vanhomrigh. However this may be, 
it is certain that the lives of two women were pathetically, even tragically, 
influenced by this outwardly unromantic man. 

The last years of Swift's life were darkened by insanity, of which he had 
long had a presentiment. Years before while passing an old tree, he had 
said to his companion: "I shall die as that tree, from the top down." The 
prophecy came true: violent fits of madness seized him; at last he sank 
into an unrelieved torpor, and the ruins of his splendid intellect went down 
in silence. He died in 1745, and was buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral, 
Dublin. His small fortune went by his direction to found an asylum for the 
insane. 

His Personality. — Swift is the most solitary figure of his cen- 
tury. The one bright experience of his life, a gleam of sunshine 
on a cloudy day, is his romantic attachment to Stella: the endear- 
ing expressions which abound in the Journal — desultory chit-chat, 
scraps of playful humor, touches of personal vanity — have done 
more to redeem the character of Swift from the charge of unre- 
lieved cynicism and selfishness than all the brilliant products 
of his splendid intellect. Even this bitter satirist, this scornful 
pessimist, had his moments of tenderness. Pride and misanthropy 
— these are the dominant characteristics of the man as revealed 
in his formal writings; but we must not forget that he was no 
hypocrite. He smashed shams and he hated insincerity. But he 
went too far and became, as Horace Walpole said, "a wild beast 
who worried and baited all mankind almost, because his intoler- 
able arrogance, vanity, pride, and ambition were disappointed." 

His character is, indeed, full of inconsistencies and surprises; 
but the traits which determined the course of his life were not 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 231 



those that give courage and hope; rather, they were the destruc- 
tive passions of hatred, contempt, despair. He had no generous 
enthusiasms, no real geniality, no helpful sympathy. He was a 
mad jester who railed on his fellow men and whose philosophy 
of life was ignoble and essentially false, despite his immense 
genius. His life suggests a colossal tragedy: "an awful downfall 
and ruin," says Thackeray; "so great a man he seems to me, that 
thinking of him is like thinking of an empire falling." 

His Works. — In his earlier years as secretary to Sir William 
Temple, Swift tried his hand at writing poetry, as all the literary 
men of that age did. But Swift was no poet, and he burned much 
of his earlier verse. The one piece of verse which deserves reading, 
because it has a certain personal interest, is Cadenus and Vanessa 
(1713), addressed to Hester Vanhomrigh ("Vanessa"). In this 
production Swift (Cadenus is an anagram of Decanus, Latin for 
Dean, referring of course to himself, then Dean of St. Patrick's) 
assumes the character of an older teacher to a pupil, and tries 
to reconcile "Vanessa" to the acceptance of a sort of paternal 
relationship toward her, rather than that of a lover. 

The principal works of Swift are prose satires: The Tale of a 
Tub, The Battle of the Books, Gulliver's Travels. The first two 
were written at Sir William Temple's as early as 1698, though 
they were not published until 1704, and then anonymously. 
The Tale of a Tub takes its name, as Swift explains, from the cus- 
tom sailors had of throwing out an empty tub to a whale about 
to attack the ship. So he throws out this Tale of a Tub to the 
critics who are attacking the ship of Church and State that he 
may divert their attention and save the ship. It seems, moreover, 
that formerly any rambling, improbable story, was sometimes 
called the "tale of a tub." 

Swift's Tale of a Tub is the story of the fortunes of three brothers, 
Peter, Martin, and Jack, to each of whom their father had left a 
new coat with very explicit directions in his will as to how it 
should be worn. They are to live in harmony and simplicity, and 
they are not to change the fashion of their coats, no matter what 
the prevailing fashion at any one time may happen to be. But 



232 



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gradually these brothers misinterpret their father's will, add all 
sorts of showy colors, top-knots and trimmings, until the original 
shape and color were quite changed. Peter is the most conspicu- 
ous offender in these respects, growing so scandalous in his dis- 
regard of his father's will that his two brothers resolve to leave 
him. Then the two brothers fall out with each other. Peter 
stands for the Church of Rome, Martin the Church of England, and 
Jack the Presbyterian, or Calvinist, Church. All this is told with 
many digressions and with an abundance of caustic wit. Swift's 
ostensible purpose in The Tale of a Tub was to defend the Church 
of England and to call attention to the shameful corruptions, 
abuses, and quarrels which divide Christianity; but he goes deeper 
and brings a bitter indictment against human nature, which he 
finds inherently depraved. 

The Battle of the Boohs, the other short but powerful satire of 
Swift, is a mock-heroic account in the Homeric style of a fight 
between the Ancient books and the Modern books in the king's 
library. Sir William Temple, Swift's patron, was the advocate 
of the Ancients, and Richard Bentley, the greatest scholar of 
his age, the defender of the Moderns. The battle is won by the 
Ancients, inasmuch as Swift naturally sided with Temple, though 
in the actual controversy as to the relative merits of ancient and 
modern literature, which originated in France, the moderns had 
the better of it. The Battle of the Books is an exceedingly clever 
burlesque on pedantry. We do not find in English literature a 
more striking use of the "Homeric simile." As an illustration of 
this figure, the sentence which wittily sets forth the climax of 
the combat when Boyle, doughty champion of the Ancients, 
slays Bentley and Wotton, his antagonists, may be quoted : 

As when a slender cook has trussed a brace of woodcocks, he with iron 
skewer pierces the tender sides of both, their legs and wings close pinioned 
to their ribs, so was this pair of friends transfixed, till down they fell joined 
in their lives, joined in their deaths; so closely joined, that Charon would 
mistake them both for one, and waft them over Styx for half his fare. 

The third and longest of Swift's great satires is Gulliver's Trav- 
els, published in 1726. This is of course by far the most famous 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 233 



book he ever wrote, and it made his name familiar over Europe 
and in distant lands. Gulliver's Travels is first of all a pleasing 
story which has for many generations delighted young and old, 
but particularly the young, by its romance and its realism. Swift 
meant it to be a scathing satire on "that hated and detestable 
animal called man;" and so it is. But it is at the same time an 
original piece of brilliant imaginative narrative, so directly and 
so reasonably told, that even the very elect were sometimes inclined 
to regard it as a true record. Lemuel Gulliver's adventures among 
the Lilliputians, the little people, and among the Brobdingnagians, 
the giants, seem almost as real as Robinson Crusoe's. Purged of 
certain coarse expressions and allusions, the first three parts of 
Gulliver's Travels make entertaining reading, in spite of the satire, 
which is happily lost on children; but the fourth part of the book 
becomes disgusting, for it reveals in all its grossness and violence 
Swift's contempt for English society in particular and for man in 
general. The Houyhnhnms 1 and Yahoos — horses endowed with 
reason, and bestial creatures of the Caliban type — are exceedingly 
repulsive; and the satire degenerates into a coarse and revolting 
attack on human depravity. 

Among the miscellaneous writings of Swift are the Bickerstaff 
Almanac, the Drapier Letters, A Modest Proposal, and the interest- 
ing Journal to Stella. The Bicker staff A Imanac consists of a number 
of predictions for the year 1708, worked out and published the 
preceding year by Swift in imitation of the methods of the astrol- 
ogers, a species of quacks in whom a great many people believed. 
Among these predictions was one in regard to the death of a popu- 
lar charlatan named Partridge, which event Swift asserted would 
occur upon a certain day, sustaining his assertion by an elaborate 
proof according to the laws of the so-called science of astrology. 
Partridge vehemently protested that he was still alive after the 
day fixed for his death, but Bickerstaff (Swift) insisted that he 
was dead, proving the statement publicly by such convincing 
arguments — in which he was supported by other practical jokers 



Pronounced whinnems, in imitation of the horse's whinny. 



234 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



of the day — that poor Partridge was actually laughed out of 
business in spite of his protests. 

The Drapier Letters were written against a certain act of the 
English Parliament granting a patent to a man named Wood 
permitting him to coin copper halfpence for circulation among 
the Irish people, according to the terms of which it was believed 
that the people of Ireland would be seriously defrauded and Wood 
enriched. Swift wrote four letters, representing himself as a 
Dublin draper and arguing with shrewd sense and humor that 
the operation of the proposed scheme would mean the ruin of 
Ireland. The government in consequence recalled the odious 
contract and Swift became very popular with the Irish people. 
A Modest Proposal is the astounding proposition, set forth with 
great outward calm and moderation of style, that in view of the 
great poverty of Ireland, the young children of the country should 
be used for food. It is a hideous piece of irony, and represents 
Swift in his most bitter mood. The Journal to Stella, already 
mentioned, is particularly valuable as reflecting the social and 
political life of the day as commented upon by a keen observer 
without any thought of publication. 

Swift's Literary Characteristics. — Jonathan Swift is by general 
consent the greatest prose satirist in our literature. He was a 
master of grim irony: his humor bites and, cuts; his style is vigor- 
ous and clear, sinewy and pellucid, but wanting in beauty and 
gentleness. He has neither elevation nor real persuasiveness, 
and he is devoid of the inner sense for "sweetness and light" — 
an expression which he coined but does not illustrate. He excites 
our admiration, but he causes to spring up within our souls no 
great ideals. Yet, withal, Swift's writings are models of clear, 
strong English, and mark a distinct advance in our prose style. 
He thought straight and wrote with great precision. 

Swift is noteworthy, moreover, as a forerunner of the English 
novel. By his vivid treatment of impossibilities, as illustrated in 
his Gulliver's Travels, he showed that he was gifted with an essen- 
tial quality of the successful story-teller — the ability to invest with 
an atmosphere of reality the improbable and remote. He told 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 235 



the story of Lemuel Gulliver's travels so plainly, so naturally, 
that many of his readers were almost convinced that it was true. 
Along with Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Defoe's Robinson 
Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels may be classed as an important contribu- 
tion to the beginnings of our great stream of realistic prose fiction. 

II. POETRY 

Satiric and didactic verse prevailed in this period : there were 
few lyrics, no epics, no dramas. The "heroic couplet," used with 
telling effect by Dryden, was universally popular in the highly 
polished form to which it had now been brought by Pope and his 
imitators. The poetry of the day was intellectually clever, but 
wanting in depth and genuineness of feeling and in imaginative 
reach; made according to rule and dealing with social or well- 
worn philosophic themes, to which brilliant phrasing gave an 
air of novelty. Under the influence of Classicism, English poetry 
had become artificial and more or less mechanical, reflecting the 
outwardly refined but superficial taste of the town. It shows no 
real appreciation of nature, no love of bird and flower, of field and 
wood, no sympathy for the simple joys of the human heart. 
When these things are touched upon, it is with such a profusion 
of classical imagery in such stilted language that no definite and 
vital impression is conveyed. A wheatfield is "the wealth of 
Ceres," a red flower is a "blushing Flora," a spade is "a horticul- 
tural implement," women are "the fair sex," girls are "nymphs." 
As James Russell Lowell wittily remarks, "Everybody called 
everything something else." The atmosphere of the city drawing- 
room is found in the poetry; rhetorical figures lend a pleasing 
veneer to the language. The one poet in whom all the striking 
literary characteristics of the age are to be found is Alexander 
Pope, the successor of John Dryden, and the acknowledged high 
priest of poetic art in the earlier eighteenth century as Dryden 
was in the later seventeenth. 

ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744) 

His Life. — Alexander Pope was born in London in 1688. His father was a 
well-to-do linen merchant, who made a comfortable fortune and retired dur- 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



ing Alexander's childhood to Binfield, on the edge of Windsor Forest. The 
family was Catholic, and because of the strong prejudice against this faith 
since the Revolution of 1688, the children of Catholic parents were not admit- 
ted to the great public schools. Pope's educational training was accordingly 
more or less unsystematic; he had private tutors and he read and studied 
by himself. He was, moreover, deformed and very delicate: physical weak- 
ness and seclusion made him sensitive and irritable. A remarkably pre- 
cocious child, he early read such classics as Homer, Virgil, Ovid, and Hor- 
ace, and he found delight in Spenser, Waller, and particularly in Dryden, 
whom he once saw at Will's Coffee-house. Pope began to make verses 
when a mere child: 

While yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, 
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. 

Although the youthful poet had written much verse by the time he was of 
age, his earliest notable productions are the Pastorals, published in 1709, 
but written when he was sixteen. Other poems on classical models and with 
an abundance of classical mythology followed; but not until 1711, upon the 
appearance of the Essay on Criticism, was his reputation as a poet estab- 
lished. From this time on his life was that of the professional man of letters, 
devoted singly to literature. 

In 1718 Pope moved to Twickenham, a little country town on the Thames 
between Windsor and London, where he had bought a small estate. This 
he converted into an attractive villa with trim gardens laid out in the 
French fashion of Versailles; he constructed a tunnel under a road on the 
place and gave the name of "grotto" to it, adorning this subterranean retreat 
with shells and pieces of glass until the walls bristled and glittered. Here 
the poet received his distinguished friends, for he had now become the 
foremost poet of his day. 

With most of his colleagues he sooner or later quarreled. His first serious 
difference was with Wycherley, the dissolute old Restoration dramatist, 
whose verses he criticised so severely that Wycherley would have nothing 
more to do with the young poetic autocrat. Then followed disagreements 
with the critic Dennis, with Addison, with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 
and finally with Bolingbroke. With Swift and Arbuthnot — Arbuthnot, 
truest, most generous, and wisest of friends — he had no serious quarrels. 
These two were fellow-members of the Scriblerus Club, a little society 
projected for the purpose of writing satires on the life and works of an 
imaginary personage, ' 'Martin Scriblerus," noted for his dullness. 

Revered as the first poet of the age and surrounded by a group of wits, 
among whom were a few real friends, Pope spent his last years as peace- 
fully as his somewhat peevish temper and diseased body would permit him. 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 237 



He called his life "a long disease," and it was so indeed. Worn out at last, 
he received his friends in bed, and had a kind word and a smile for each of 
them. The end came peacefully, May 30, 1744, and a few days later he 
was buried in Twickenham Church near his villa on the Thames. 

His Personality. — Pope was a little, nervous man, with frail, 
deformed body and a keen intellect. All his life he w T as afflicted 
with physical disease, which naturally made his temper irritable 
and his tongue sharp. Dr. Johnson gives this account of his 




POPE'S VILLA AT TWICKENHAM 



physical weakness: "When he rose, he was invested in a bodice 
made of stiff canvass, being scarcely able to hold himself erect 
till it was laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side 
was contracted. His legs were so slender that he enlarged their 
bulk with three pair of stockings, which were drawn on and off 
by a maid." Closely allied to his physical weakness was a species 
of mental disease which rendered him morbidly jealous and sus- 
picious, and caused him to be at times utterly unscrupulous in his 
utterances. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to whom Pope had 



238 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



written gallant verses in the manner of a lover to his mistress, at 
last fell out with him, characterizing him as the "wicked wasp of 
Twickenham." 

In spite of his petty intrigues, his slanders, his distortion of 
facts, his jealousies, and his invectives, Pope was true to such 
men as Arbuthnot and Swift, and always devoted to his old mother, 
who died at an advanced age in 1733. She wrote to him almost 
daily, and the burden of her little letters was this: "I send you my 
daily prayers, and I bless you, my deare." Pope was the center of 
a circle of wits such as no other English writer of the time could 
command, and he gave forth laws to his "listening senate" in 
the manner of old John Dryden, his model, who, as Fielding said, 
"died in a good old age, possessed of the Kingdom of Wit, and was 
succeeded by King Alexander, surnamed Pope." Sometimes we 
feel contempt for his vanity and his deceit; oftener, perhaps, we 
have a sense of pity for his diseased body and of admiration for 
his brilliant intellect. 

His Works. — The principal works of Alexander Pope are the 
Essay on Criticism (1711), Rape of the Lock (1712, revised in 1714), 
Windsor Forest and the Temple of Fame (1713), Translation of 
Homer (1715-1726), The Dunciad (1728 in three books, with 
fourth book in 1742), Essay on Man (1733), Imitations of Horace 
(1739), Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. 

Pope's literary career began in 1709 with the publication of 
the Pastorals, a series of eclogues on the seasons quite in the clas- 
sical manner. The most striking thing about these earlier poems 
is not the imagery — which is conventional, and to the modern 
reader absurd, because of the use of Greek and Latin divinities 
in an English setting, — but the smoothness and clever phrasing. 
The Essay on Criticism, however, made a decided hit. Here was 
a didactic poem setting forth in polished and quotable lines the 
old established rules of literary criticism as reflecting the opinions 
of that arbiter of French taste, Boileau, from whom Dryden had 
gained so much in the preceding age. There is certainly no origin- 
ality of thought here, but there is novelty of expression; we have 
brilliant epigram in couplets which stick in the memory. Here are 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



239 



a few familiar lines, which speedily became current coin in our 
English speech: 

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 

A little learning is a dangerous thing; 
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. 

To err is human, to forgive divine. 

First follow nature and your judgment frame 
By her just standard, which is still the same. 
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; 
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: 
Be not the first by whom the new are tried, 
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. 

The Essay on Criticism was widely praised, the French critics 
declaring that at last England had a "correct" poet. The gist 
of the poem is that an author should follow nature as "methodised" 
— trimmed down and reduced to order — by the rules of classic 
art. 

Pope's next poem, the Rape of the Lock, literally took the 
town by storm. The occasion of the poem was this: a young 
nobleman, Lord Petre, had clipped off a lock of Miss Arabella 
Fermor's hair. Now Miss Fermor was a celebrated beauty of 
the day, and this theft of one of her curls made her indignant 
with the noble lord and resulted in coolness between the families. 
The incident was related to Pope, with suggestion that he write a 
poem and by making the trivial happening appear absurd restore 
good feeling. Out of this grew the Rape of the Lock, the greatest 
mock-heroic poem in our literature. The action covers one day 
in the life of a London lady of fashion: the rising at twelve, the 
making of the elaborate toilet, the journey from the city to Hamp- 
ton Court in a gayly decked boat on the Thames, filled with belles 
and beaux among whom "Belinda" (Miss Fermor) is queen; the 
social diversions at the party, the clipping of the lock with the 
dire consequences; and finally, the passing of the fateful lock of 
Belinda's hair to the skies to become a shining constellation. All 



240 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



the social trivialities of the time are touched upon in the poem — 
lap dogs, card games, coffee-drinking, billets-doux, puffs, powders, 
patches, pomatums, and the rest. An army of spirits — sprites, 
sylphs, gnomes, and salamanders, which, according to the Rosi- 
crucians, a fantastic sect of the day, make up the four elements — 
watch and influence the contest in the manner of the gods at the 
battles in the Trojan war. In witty burlesque fashion the machin- 
ery of a classic epic is employed to describe ombre, the favorite 
card game of the period, and the battle which follows the theft of 
the famous lock of hair. No more clever social satire, with bril- 
liant epigram and absurd contrasts, exists in our literature. 

Pope's Translation of Homer, upon which he was engaged 
about ten years, was exceedingly popular in an age which was 
devoted to the rhyming couplet and artificial language. We of 
to-day, who love simplicity and strength in poetry rather than 
glitter and jingle, feel as Richard Bentley, the finest classical 
scholar of that day, did when he said to Pope, "It is a pretty 
poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." Pope made a 
small fortune out of this translation, which, in spite of its defects, 
has held a secure place as an English classic. He took great 
pains with his version of the Iliad, polishing it and revising it; 
but he translated only half of the Odyssey, the last twelve books 
being the work of the two Cambridge scholars, Broome and Fenton. 
Indeed, the movement of the Iliad story, with its battles and 
quarrels, was better suited to the temperament of Pope than the 
quieter, more idyllic narrative of the Odyssey, with its charm of 
sea horizons and pastoral landscapes. Pope was not an accurate 
scholar and had to rely much upon the learning of others; and yet, 
in spite of its manifest limitations, his translation of the Iliad is 
a spirited performance, certain passages of which reproduce with 
telling effect the action of the original poem. 

The Dunciad is an Iliad of Dunces, or "scribblers," as Pope 
and his coterie called their literary enemies. In the Dunciad he 
impales the victims of his scorn or wrath, and often very unjustly, 
as, for instance, when he puts among the dunces Bentley, White- 
field, and Defoe— men of great ability with more real wisdom and 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 241 



learning than Pope had. As a whole the Dunciad is tiresome 
reading to-day, since many of the men attacked are obscure and 
many allusions are incomprehensible to later generations without 
elaborate notes, which are a weariness of the flesh. As a species 
of personal satire it has high literary merits, but the laughter 
which followed its publication sounds hollow, if it sounds at all, 
through the two centuries which separate us from the petty 
quarrels which provoked this pamphlet in verse. Byron imitated 
it in the earlier years of the nineteenth century in his English 
Bards and Scotch Reviewers, but comparatively few care for it 
to-day. 

The Essay on Man addressed to Henry St. John, Lord Boling- 
broke, is a professedly philosophical poem on the general propo- 
sition, "Whatever is, is right. " Pope, as Sir Leslie Stephen has 
remarked, "thought and felt by electric shocks and flashes ;" 
this was due, no doubt, to his physical weakness which made 
sustained intellectual effort impossible. The Essay on Man con- 
sists of a series of reflections on man's relation to God, to himself, 
to the universe, and to society, the announced purpose being to 
"vindicate the ways of God to Man" — an echo of Milton's well- 
known line near the beginning of Paradise Lost. The philosophy 
of the Essay on Man is superficial, dogmatic, and general, but it 
greatly pleased the wits of the day and was widely read over the 
continent of Europe. The champions of religious orthodoxy saw 
in Pope's conclusions, however, certain alarming heresies, espe- 
cially since Voltaire had praised the poem, and they made the 
poet uncomfortable by their attacks. In order to placate them he 
wrote "The Universal Prayer," the noblest of his utterances. 
The Essay on Man has many fine passages; as a whole it has more 
elevation than any other of his didactic poems; and it contains 
many lines which have become familiar quotations. These, for 
example : 

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, 
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; 
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace. 



242 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Honor and shame from no condition rise; 
Act well your part: there all the honor lies. 

For modes of faith let graceless zealots figfyt; 
He can't be wrong whose life is in the right. 

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, 
The proper study of mankind is man. 

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: 
Man never is, but always to be blest. 

The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot deserves reading as a tribute to 
Pope's constant friend, Arbuthnot, and as a sort of defense of 
his own life. Here he reveals the motives and struggles of his 
literary career. 

Pope's Literary Characteristics and Influence. — The poetry of 
Pope is an epitome of the Age of Anne; it reflects in compact and 
polished epigram the social whims, the philosophic vagaries, the 
political jealousies, the literary ideals of that interesting period. 
And Pope was its supreme interpreter. On the throne of poetry, 
such as it was, he sat absolute monarch. He was a professional 
man of letters, giving his whole time to writing and supporting 
himself by his pen, as no other eminent author had done up to 
this time. 

Pope is the supreme master of the heroic couplet, that form to 
which Dryden first gave distinction, and he is master of the poetry 
of social satire. Satiric and didactic verse reached its perfection 
in his work; and the influence of Classicism is seen at its best. 
He is the architect of the perfect couplet, the artist of the finished 
line. His poetry sparkles with the wit of antithesis: contrast, 
balance, the apt rhyme, the apt phrase, the magic coinage of the 
commonplace into portable currency — these are the distinctive 
marks of the poetry of Pope. It is not original in thought, it is 
not suggestive, it has no uplifting power, stirs no generous emo- 
tions, kindles no fine enthusiasms, inspires no moral ardor; but 
of its kind it is unsurpassed. 

Pope's own contemporaries held him in high esteem as a poet; in 
the succeeding generation Dr. Johnson said to Boswell that "a 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



243 



thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man 
with a power of versification equal to that of Pope." The "power 
of versification" was indeed possessed by Pope to a high degree, 
although we may not call him an inspired poet capable, like Milton, 
of building the "lofty rhyme." For fifty years or more, at any 
rate, Alexander Pope was the model of English poets, and his 
influence extended even to Byron, who lived in the very midst 
of that great Romantic movement which was a reaction against 
the school of Pope. 

Minor Poets. — Of the several minor poets, who are sometimes 
called collectively the "School of Pope," Matthew Prior and John 
Gay deserve some notice. MATTHEW PRIOR (1664-1721) was edu- 
cated at Cambridge, held several public offices, was made ambas- 
sador to France^ wrote a volume of poems, and spent his last years 
on a country estate presented to him by an admirer. He is buried 
in Westminster Abbey "under a monument for which he had the 
vanity to pay five hundred pounds." Though Prior wrote several 
long poems which were praised by contemporary readers, but 
which are dull reading to-day, he is famous in literature for his 
shorter poems of lyric quality, such as "To a Child of Quality 
Five Years Old," graceful verses showing his courtly wit. 

JOHN GAY (1685-1732) "seems to have begun his life," says his 
biographer, "under the impression that it was somebody's duty 
to provide for him in the world, and this impression clung to him 
through nearly the whole of a lifetime." Left an orphan at an 
early age, he was educated by friends, then acted as secretary 
to several prominent members of the nobility, was generously 
befriended by Pope and other literary men. He seems to have had 
a sort of childlike guilelessness and want of responsibility, depend- 
ing for his maintenance on friends whom his pleasing personality 
had drawn to him. His epitaph in Westminster Abbey, composed 
by himself, illustrates the superficiality of his nature: 

Life is a jest, and all things show it; 
I thought so once, and now I know it. 

The most interesting of Gay's works to the reader of to-day are 
The Fables, little moral stories in imitation of the poems of the 



244 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



French writer La Fontaine; Trivia, wonderfully minute pictures 
of London street-life in the eighteenth century; the song, or ballad 
"Black-eyed Susan/' one of the best lyrics of that artificial age; 
and The Beggar's Opera, a popular burlesque of the species of 
Italian opera which was a fad in London at the time and of which 
men of letters made much fun. The popularity of The Beggar's 
Opera was due in part to its clever local political hits. The verse 
of Prior and Gay is smooth and graceful, but in keeping with the 
spirit of this social age it does not go beneath the surface. 

Connecting this group with the pioneer Romantic poets (see 
page 278) is EDWARD YOUNG (1684-1765), whose long and rather 
tedious moralizing poem, Night Thoughts, was once widely read, 

THE PERIOD IN OUTLINE (1700-1740) 



LITERATURE 
I. Prose 
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) : 

The Spectator, 1711 
Richard Steele: The Tatler, 1709 
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), 

Satirist: Tale of a Tub, Battle 
of the Books, Gulliver's Travels 
(1726) 

First Daily Newspaper The Cou- 
rant), 1702 

Defoe's Review, 1704 
II. Poetry 

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): 

Satires, Didactic Poems, Trans- 
lations: Rape of the Lock, Essay 
on Man, Duncaid, Translation of 
Homer 

Matthew Prior and John Gay, 
writers of graceful lyrics and 
society verse 



HISTORY 
Reign of Queen Anne, 1702-1714 



Reigns of George I and II, 1714- 
1760 



Battle of Blenheim, 1704 



Beginning of Cabinet Government 
under Walpole, first Prime Min- 
ister, 1721 

Rise of Methodism (Wesley's 
Preaching) 1739 

War of Austrian Succession, 1740- 
1748 



CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS:— Triumph of Classicism; Rise of Period- 
ical Literature; Social Age; Politics and Literature closely related; Modern 
Prose. 



THE EARLIER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 245 



SOME USEFUL BOOKS 

Historical and Social. — Morris's The Age of Queen Anne (Epochs of His- 
tory Series), Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, Mc- 
Carthy's The Reign of Queen Anne, Besant's London in the Eighteenth 
Century, Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne (an interesting 
and valuable work), Thackeray's Henry Esmond (reproduces the atmos- 
phere of the period). 

Literary. — Gosse's Eighteenth Century English Literature, (Macmillan), 
Perry's Eighteenth Century Literature, Stephen's English Literature in the 
Eighteenth Century, Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature (Ginn), 
Dennis' The Age of Pope (Macmillan), Lives of Addison, Steele, Swift, and 
Pope, in English Men of Letters Series. — Selections from the works of 
earlier eighteenth century writers may be found in "Everyman's 
Library," or in numerous inexpensive annotated school editions. 



CHAPTER NINE 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

1740-1798 

I. RISE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 
II. JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE 
III. BEGINNINGS OF ROMANTICISM 

Political and Industrial Expansion. — About the middle of the 
eighteenth century a change came over the political and industrial 
life of England which resulted in the rapid development of the 
nation into a world empire. The first forty years of the century 
were politically corrupt, low and commonplace ideals prevail- 
ing in public office. Sir Robert Walpole was for more than twenty 
years head of the government, a shrewd, practical, and prosaic 
man, corrupt in methods, convinced that "every man has his 
price," and thoroughly cynical about public and private virtue. 
Without imagination himself, Walpole laughed to scorn all pro- 
fessions of patriotism and generous sentiment; he regarded all 
men as thoroughly selfish and public office as an opportunity for 
private gain. This low political and social attitude was, as we 
have seen, reflected in the literature of the day — in Pope's com- 
placent tone, with its implied contempt for man's nobler nature, 
and still more disagreeably in Swift's bitter satire. But with the 
fall of the Walpole administration in 1742, the old narrow-minded 
policies gave place to more enlightened views as to the duties of 
public leaders. 

William Pitt was animated by loftier ideals; he was a lover of 
his country and an enthusiastic believer in a greater Britain. 
England was ready for a reaction against the insular policies of 
Walpole, and readily responded to the appeals of Pitt for united 

[2461 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 247 

efforts in the direction of colonial expansion. Since the notable 
victories of Marlborough in Queen Anne's day the nation had been 
at peace; she had been growing rich at home, devoting her ener- 
gies to building up her internal resources. The merchant, or 
trading-class, of whom Sir Andrew Freeport in The Spectator is 
a typical representative, had become rich and in consequence very 
influential. The wealth of England had enormously increased. 
Material prosperity made the people indifferent to higher things 
for a while; but the spirit of idealism never wholly perishes in 
the Englishman. As it was in the days of Elizabeth, so it came to 
be in the days of Pitt: provincial pride was fanned into a flame of 
glowing patriotism by war and exploration; victories in the far 
East and in the West, the voyages of Anson and Cook, meant 
the ultimate supremacy of England in India and Australia and 
Canada. Clive had won a notable victory at Plassey in 1757, 
and Wolfe had captured Quebec in 1759; Captain Cook's voyages 
a little later opened new lands in the Pacific, and Australia became 
a part of the British empire. Thus, at home the nation felt the 
quickening impulse of the discovery and taking of new lands, and 
modern England was definitely committed to her policy of splendid 
imperialism. 

Religious and Philanthropic Enthusiasm. — The middle and later 
eighteenth century is notable also for an awakening of the English 
conscience and heart through the preaching of such great religious 
reformers as John Wesley and George Whitefield and such philan- 
thropists as John Howard and William Wilberforce. The rise of 
Methodism was the result of a reaction against the coldness and 
formalism of the English Church during the later seventeenth cen- 
tury and earlier eighteenth, when lax morals and low ideals were 
common among the clergy. As Puritanism had been a protest 
against religious corruption in the seventeenth century, so was 
Methodism in the eighteenth, but with a difference. Puritanism 
had been a movement for greater individual liberty, religious, 
political, social — an effort to purify national life; Methodism was 
a strictly religious movement, an effort to arouse the Church to 
greater spiritual activity, to revive and democratize the Church. 



248 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



The influence of the itinerant preaching of Wesley and White- 
field was felt not only in the churches of Great Britain, but in 
the social and intellectual life of the day as well. This great relig- 
ious revival helped to restore emotion to its proper place in the 
lives of Englishmen after the intellectual chill and skeptical 
atmosphere of the shallow philosophy of Bolingbroke, Chester- 
field, and other leaders in early eighteenth century thought. 

A new birth of sympathy followed, showing itself in various 
kinds of social reform, the most noteworthy being the labors of 
John Howard, the philanthropist, for the betterment of English 
prisons, and of William Wilberforce for the abolition of slavery 
in British dominions. Howard visited the jails of England, 
bringing cheer into darkened and germ-breeding dungeons and 
exposing the criminal neglect of officials. All these reforms quick- 
ened the conscience of the nation and contributed to that wonderful 
revival in literature called Romanticism, which we shall presently 
consider. 

Newer Social Ideals. — The great social upheaval in France, 
known as the French Revolution, and the desire for political 
liberty among the American colonies, resulting in the Declara- 
tion of Independence and a new republic, were manifestations 
of the passion for democracy and the rights of the individual 
which changed the spirit of English literature in the later eight- 
eenth century. The French writer Rousseau had insistently 
pleaded for a ' 'return to nature" and the ' 'rights of man," and 
his books had much to do with the spread of the new gospel of 
democracy. A deeper sense of human brotherhood stirred the 
sympathies of men for the unfortunate and the oppressed; the 
worth and dignity of the individual came to be felt as never 
before; political and personal freedom was passionately advocated 
in the use of the magic words, "liberty, equality, fraternity " 
Compassion and sympathy for man and beast succeeded the 
restrained and conventional feeling of the earlier eighteenth 
century; practical reforms were enthusiastically begun, and the 
speedy coming of a Golden Age, when the dream of the brother- 
hood of man would be realized, was rapturously proclaimed. 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 24U 



Society was to be reorganized, the burdened laborer was to be 
free from poverty, and the individual man was to be fully recog- 
nized in the new social order. 

It was an age of revolution over western Europe, violent in 
France, bloodless in England, but none the less significant of a 
changing attitude of mind toward the rights of the individual and 
the relation of man to nature. As we shall see, English poetry 
in particular begins to reflect these newer social ideals in the latter 
half of the century; at its close the tone of our poetry has changed 
entirely. The most notable contribution of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, however, is the English novel. 

I. RISE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL 

Forerunners of the Novel. — The art of story-telling had been 
practiced for ages before the rise of the modern novel. Stories 
of one kind and another, in verse and in prose, are to be found in 
the literatures of all peoples. In our own literature we have noted 
the thrilling exploits of Beowulf, the knightly adventures in the 
metrical romances of the middle ages, particularly those of the 
Arthurian legends, the stories retold by Chaucer in the Canter- 
bury Tales, and the romantic, frankly unreal narratives of Sidney, 
Lyly, Nash, Greene, Lodge, and Peele, among the Elizabethans. 
In the Elizabethan Age it was the drama and not the so-called 
novel which reflected real life and human nature as we recognize 
it everywhere. Up to the eighteenth century it may be said, in 
general, that the writers of stories long or short were chiefly con- 
cerned with narratives of incident more or less unreal, and not 
with character and everyday life such as we observe in homely 
scenes, where actual men and women have their joys and sorrows 
and struggles. 

A popular form of prose fiction during the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries was the "romance of roguery," or "picaresque 
novel," (from picaro, the Spanish word for rogue), in which some 
impudent but clever rascal is made to pass through a series of 
diverting adventures in which he is always outwitting somebody 



250 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



and having hairbreadth escapes. In these books the interest 
lies in the incident, the trick played, the action; the story is a 
string of adventures, without unity and without probability. 
There had been in France interminable romances about the love- 
making of courtiers who pined away at the neglect of disdainful 
ladies and were rewarded at the end of the tenth volume. But 
these were not transcripts from life; the common man had no 
share in them; he was not interested in the doings of characters 
remote from his world. 

With the rise of periodicals in the early eighteenth century, 
however, literature became more intimately concerned with the 
thoughts and feelings of the "average man": the influence of 
coffee-houses, clubs, theaters, and particularly of woman, made 
the prose of the day more distinctly social. This is manifest in 
the character-sketches of The Tatler and The Spectator, which 
contributed to the rise of the novel of domestic life. There are 
three works, however, which are in a more definite sense the 
forerunners of the novel — Pilgrim's Progress, Gulliver's Travels, 
and Robinson Crusoe. Each of these books must have seemed to 
the sturdy middle-class Englishman who read them to reflect 
something of his own sentiments. At any rate, they came within 
the range of his possible experience; such things might happen 
to him; the hero in each case seemed human enough, even though 
his adventures were beyond the ordinary. It required no literary 
and high social culture to understand such books as these; here, 
then, was democratic literature. It was not hard to imagine 
yourself Christian, or Crusoe, or even Gulliver, so realistically 
was the story of their travels told. They were everyday English- 
men, journeying for a time "in a far country," where strange 
things might be expected to happen. 

From such humanized tales of adventure to the story of domestic 
trials amid English scenes — the countryside, the village, London — 
was the next step, a long step, perhaps, but a natural one. The 
man who is most representative of this transition stage in English 
prose fiction, the pioneer of the modern novel, is Daniel Defoe. 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 251 



DANIEL DEFOE (1681-1731) 

His Life. — Daniel Defoe was born in London about 1661. His father, 
James Foe, was a well-to-do butcher, and belonged to the growing number 
of religious Dissenters, a class toward whom little tolerance was shown 
at that time. The son assumed the aristocratic prefix "De" when he was 
about forty, and his surname became Defoe instead of Foe. Defoe's father 
intended that his son should be a dissenting minister, and sent him to a 
neighboring academy to be educated, but the boy had no special liking for 
that vocation, and probably left school before completing the prescribed 
course. Little, indeed, is certainly known about his life during these earlier 
years; the extent and variety of his knowledge warrant us in believing, 
however, that he was a diligent reader and an uncommonly keen observer. 

After leaving the academy Defoe engaged in several commercial enter- 
prises, all of which seem to have been unsuccessful. Meanwhile he had 
become interested in politics, taking part in the Duke of Monmouth's 
rebellion in 1685, and later writing pamphlets in favor of William of Orange, 
by whom as William III he was in 1694 given a government position. He 
was in the government service for several years, always loyal to the king 
in whose defense he wrote a flattering poem called the True-born English- 
man. In 1697 he had written an Essay on Projects, a work, it will be remem- 
bered, to which Benjamin Franklin expressed his indebtedness in the for- 
mation of a clear style. 

Defoe's blunt satire, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, written in 
1702 against Tories and High Churchmen and in grim defense of the Dis- 
senters, caused such indignation that Defoe was put into the public pillory 
for a day and then sent to prison for a year. Released through the inter- 
cession of a prominent Tory nobleman, Defoe was sent to Scotland on a 
secret mission for the government. In 1704 he established his now famous 
Review, the brilliant articles in which gained him favor with the Whigs. 
He was now playing a difficult game: at heart he was a Whig, but he was 
under obligations to the Tories. He succeeded for a while, but was finally 
tried for libels against the House of Hanover. Too shrewd to suffer long, 
Defoe made his peace with the Whigs and returned to his editorial-writing 
and pamphleteering. After publishing an astonishing number of magazine 
articles and pamphlets on all sorts of subjects he finally turned his atten- 
tion to writing stories. Robinson Crusoe, which appeared in 1719-'20, was 
the beginning of a long list of novels of adventure. 

Defoe was now at the height of his prosperity. He held a government 
position which, together with the proceeds from his various publications, 
enabled him to live in comfort and project certain promising business 
schemes. At Stoke Newington near London he built a house, had his coach 
and liveried servants, and did some farming, while he directed. several busi- 



252 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



ness enterprises in the city. But Defoe was not a successful business man: 
reverses came at length, his debts accumulated, and his creditors harassed 
him. To escape these he fled to some obscure place, from which he wrote 
from time to time gioomy letters. These last years we know little about. 
The old man, worn out with his many strenuous labors and his misfor- 
tunes, died in 1731, and was buried in Bunhill Fields Cemetery, London, 
not far from John Bunyan. A monument erected by the children of many 
lands marks the grave of the author of Robinson Crusoe. 

His Personality. — The energy and versatility of Defoe remind 
us of the men of Elizabeth's day, of whom Raleigh is typical, 
though the imaginative splendor of those great times was not 
Defoe's. He is a curious compound of duplicity and virtue. As 
Professor Minto remarks, "sometimes pure knave seems to be 
uppermost, sometimes pure patriot; but the mixture is so complex, 
and the energy of the man so restless, that it almost passes human 
skill to unravel the two elements." 1 Defoe was a lonely man in 
an extremely social age; he did not frequent coffee-houses, as 
did Addison and Steele; he had few friends; he was restless and 
somewhat solitary and not unlike his own Robinson Crusoe. In 
spite of his infirmities, however, he has endeared himself in a 
peculiarly personal way to succeeding generations through his 
gift of realistic story-telling and his remarkable human sympathy. 

His Works and Literary Characteristics. — Defoe is the author 
of about two hundred and fifty publications, an amazing literary 
output for a man engaged in business and politics. Many of these 
works are of course pamphlets on questions of the day and now 
without interest except to the historian. Of his works other than 
fiction the most interesting to-day are the essays in The Review 
on all manner of subjects, contributed during nine years (1704- 
1713), the Essay upon Projects (in which is outlined in somewhat 
modern fashion a scheme for a woman's college), and The Shortest 
Way with the Dissenters, in which Defoe, himself a Dissenter, iron- 
ically suggests that these troublesome religionists be put to death. 
But far beyond all these in interest are his works of fiction begin- 
ning with Robinson Crusoe, written in 1719 when he was nearly 
sixty. 

1 Life of Defoe, English Men of Letters, p. 167. 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 253 



Robinson Crusoe is based on the experience of Alexander Selkirk, 
a Scotch sailor, deserted by his companions on a lonely island off 
the coast of Chili in 1704, but discovered five years later and 
taken back to England. His story excited great interest and 
sympathy throughout England. Defoe visited Selkirk at Bristol 
and so did Steele, who 
wrote an account of Sel- 
kirk's adventures in The 
Englishman. Starting 
with this bit of truth, De- 
foe constructed the enter- 
taining story of Robinson 
Crusoe, so realistic, so 
direct, so human withal, 
that two centuries have 
read it with delight. It 
is our first novel of inci- 
dent. Told in a perfectly 
straightforward manner, 
unadorned, reasonable, 
the narrative reads like a 
recital of fact. Its popu- 
larity was unprecedented: 
edition after edition was 
brought out, and the de- 
mand was not satisfied. 
The great middle class 
read and understood it; 
each reader put himself in 
the place of Crusoe just as 
Defoe had done, and each applied, consciously or unconsciously, 
the lesson of the story — the reward of patience, honesty, and 
labor. Defoe very cleverly made use of the memoir-form along 
with the diary, the narrative method which most readily gives 
the impression of truthfulness. He professes to edit these ad- 




REDUCED FACSIMILE OF THE FRONTIS- 
PIECE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF 

Robinson Crusoe 



254 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



ventures, and assures the reader in utmost frankness that he 
believes "the things to be a just history of fact." 

Other novels of adventure rapidly followed: The Life, Adven- 
tures and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton (1720), Moll 
Flanders (1722), The History of Captain Jack (1722), and Roxana 
(1724). These are narratives centering about some notorious 
adventurer, or thief, or courtesan, the originals of whom Defoe 
had probably studied in the London courts and slums. The stories 
of their wanderings, vices, trials, escapes, are told with a detail 
and frankness that invest them with an atmosphere as truthful 
as it is oppressive. Of these Moll Flanders is perhaps the most 
powerful; Captain Singleton is in places as entertaining an account 
of African explorations as the books of Stanley. The Memoirs 
of a Cavalier is so much like history that some critics still contend 
that it is an authentic record. 

The most astonishingly plausible piece of prose fiction which 
Defoe wrote is the little story called The Apparition of Mrs. 
Veal (1706), an account of the alleged appearance of a Mrs. Veal 
the day following her own death to a certain Mrs. Bargrave at 
Canterbury, September 8, 1705. The evidence is so circumstan- 
tial, the style so deliberate and concrete, so much is made of a 
certain "scoured silk gown" worn by the ghostly lady, that the 
mystification is complete: "Then Mrs. Watson cried out, 'y° u have 
seen her indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the 
gown was scoured.' " Defoe had disarmed the incredulity of his 
readers by a preface in which he set forth with great minuteness 
the direct nature of his information and the entirely trustworthy 
character of his informants. The story is as clever a hoax as 
Swift's prediction of the death of Partridge, already mentioned. 

The Journal of the Plague Year (1722) is a record of the terrible 
plague in London during 1665, purporting to have been written 
by an eyewitness. Though even now sometimes classified as 
history, it is, of course, a work of the imagination, for Defoe was 
only four or five years old when the plague raged and had no 
recollection of it. Yet so awful, so ghastly are the daily scenes 
depicted in the Journal with such careful detail, that the work 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 253 



reads like a newspaper report of actual conditions in the London 
streets. 

The most obvious characteristic of Defoe's style is its simplicity; 
there is no adornment. He can tell a plain tale without marring 
it with ornament. He was able to get the point of view of each 
of his characters, to put himself in another's place, to write of that 
other's experience as if it were his very own. He shaped his 
problem into a personal equation and then solved it by asking 
himself the question, What would I do under these circumstances? 
The result was realism. He worked out his details with great care, 
and thus impressed his readers with his fairness and his accuracy. 
He had the instinct of a journalist. The illusion of reality was 
made stronger, moreover, by his adroitly worded prefaces, in 
which he took his readers into his confidence. In Robinson Crusoe 
Defoe achieved his greatest triumph: from such a narrative of 
incident to the novel of character was just one more step. 

The Novel Proper. — A Defoe story consists of a series of adven- 
tures through which a certain individual passes. The interest is 
in what happens, or the incident. The material which Defoe uses is 
taken from everyday life and is natural enough, but the scenes 
and the happenings are often beyond the range of his reader's 
knowledge — they do not reflect life as he knows it. Now, the 
novel, as we understand the word to-day, is a picture of actual 
life under more or less familiar conditions; it is a realistic presen- 
tation in artistic form of a small section of life. There must be 
a plot developed logically by the laws of cause and effect out of a 
given situation; interest must be maintained through the play of 
character on character and the introduction of incidents and new 
situations; finally some sort of climax is reached and the compli- 
cation is relieved. Unity is obtained by skilfully combining the 
various threads of the story, grouping the characters about the 
hero or heroine, and excluding irrelevant episodes. Characters, 
plots, and setting produce a general harmony of effect; and the 
whole is so like real life that the reader is convinced that it actually 
happened or might happen. This, in brief, is the ideal plan of 
the modern novel. 



256 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 




SAMUEL RICHARDSON 



In the transition from the narrative of adventure to the novel 
proper there was a shift of emphasis from incident to character 
and manners: a small section of English domestic life was realis- 
tically treated by Samuel Richardson in his story Pamela, which 
appeared in 1740. Pamela, though by no means conforming per- 
fectly to the ideal plan of a novel just set forth, is commonly 
regarded as the first genuine modern novel. Contemporary 
with Richardson is Henry Fielding, a still greater novelist; then 
come Smollett and Sterne. 

SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761) 

His Life. — Samuel Richardson was born in Derbyshire in 1689. His father 
was a joiner, a deeply religious man who destined his son for the Church. 
Means were lacking, however, and Samuel was apprenticed at seventeen 
to a London printer. So industrious was he and so thrifty that after a few 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 257 



years he set up in business for himself, prospered, bought a country house 
in a London suburb, and spent the rest of his life there. As a boy in Derby- 
shire, Richardson was a favorite with the young ladies of his neighborhood, 
who confided their love affairs to him and got him to write their love letters. 
He was of a sympathetic disposition, could keep a secret, was resourceful 
in matters of sentiment, and gifted in the art of letter-writing. It is not 
surprising, therefore, that throughout his life he was the center of a circle 
of adoring women, who "listened to him implicitly and did not venture to 
contradict his opinions." The rotund and rosy little printer, plump and 
prosperous, endured with great complacency the flatteries of his feminine 
admirers, sympathizing, advising, and directing their correspondence. He 
was himself from his boyhood fond of writing long letters; as an apprentice 
in London he wrote regularly and in great detail to a gentleman of taste 
and learning in his native county who had befriended him. All this was 
excellent preparation for his future work. 

In 1739, when he was fifty years old, two London publishers asked Richard- 
son to write a number of letters on the concerns of ordinary life to serve 
as models for untrained country people who would like to acquire the art 
of letter-writing. These were to form a small volume, for which the pub- 
lishers felt there would be a large demand. One of the first of these model 
letters was supposed to be from a young woman named Pamela who was 
employed as a waiting-maid in a prominent country family. Instead of 
following the original plan, Richardson conceived the idea of telling the 
story of the girl's experiences by means of a series of letters written by her 
to her parents. Out of this grew the first English novel, Pamela; or Virtue 
Rewarded, published in 1740. So successful was this venture that two 
other novels followed. Richardson, whose outward life was uneventful, 
died in 1761. 

His Novels. — Richardson wrote three novels, Pamela (1740), 
Clarissa Harlowe (1748), and Sir Charles Grandison (1753). 
Pamela — the story of how a maidservant won for a husband a 
wild young man and reformed him, all through her prudent con- 
duct, — was originally published in four duodecimo volumes; 
Clarissa Harlowe — which depicts the trials and tragic fate of a 
beautiful woman pursued by an accomplished libertine — was 
published in seven; and so was Sir Charles Grandison — which 
embodies the conception of a perfect gentleman who rescues a 
charming young lady from a wild gallant. In the first two novels 
the central character is a woman, while in the third it is a man. 
In Pamela the heroine belongs to the humbler class of society, in 



258 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Clarissa Harlowe the heroine is of the upper middle class, in Sir 
Charles Grandison the hero is a member of the aristocracy. Of 
the three novels the strongest is Clarissa Harlowe, a masterly 
piece of psychological analysis. A woman's heart is the subject, 
and on such a theme Richardson's long experience and his sym- 
pathetic temperament enabled him to write with the sure hand 
of a trained artist. 

His purpose is professedly moral : he insists on rewarding virtue, 
especially in Pamela, and in so doing comes perilously near creat- 
ing an inane paragon of goodness. Indeed, the "rewarding" of 

Pamela with the hand of the erstwhile gay Mr. B — •, whom 

she brings to his senses after many trials and admonitions, smacks 
of "hhe and salary." But what Richardson lacked in humor he 
made up in knowledge of the human heart and its intenser emotions. 
As a class his women are more real than his men and Clarissa is 
one of the great characters of English fiction. His books were 
immensely popular; they were translated into several languages; 
they were read and quoted everywhere. Here was a rediscovery 
of the human heart; here were the experiences of ordinary life in 
scenes which everyone recognized. What Defoe did for realistic 
adventure, for incident pure and simple, Richardson did for char- 
acter and manners. The letter-form gave, as he thought, a greater 
naturalness to the events, while it facilitated the important matter 
of self-analysis. The domestic novel of sentiment is the signifi- 
cant contribution of Samuel Richardson to English literature. 

HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754) 

His Life. — Henry Fielding was born in Somersetshire in 1707, descendant 
of a noble family. He was educated at Eton, and studied law for a while 
at Leyden. Feeling no great interest in that profession, he went up to 
London in 1728 and began to write for the stage, turning out in rapid succes- 
sion nearly thirty comedies, burlesques, and other light dramatic skits. 
He even tried the business of theatrical management for a time; married, 
and finally settled down to the duties of a Westminster justice of the peace, 
or police judge. This office he filled with great credit, his knowledge of 
law and his theatrical experiences standing him in good stead. Meanwhile 
Fielding had devoted his leisure hours to novel-writing. The occasion for 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 259 



this was the appearance of Richardson's Pamela, which suggested to Field- 
ing the idea of writing a parody on that much praised work. But as we 
shall presently see, what was begun in jest ended in earnest, and for the 
remaining twelve years Fielding gave himself seriously to the writing of 
fiction. His health had been failing for several years, and so serious was 
his condition by 1754 that he decided to spend the winter in a milder climate. 
Accordingly, he took ship for Lisbon. Weakened by the voyage and worn 
out with years of suffering, Fielding died not long after his arrival in Lisbon 
and was buried in the Protestant cemetery there. 

His Works and Characteristics. — The works of Henry Fielding 
include a number of plays, several satires, and three immortal 
novels on which his reputation now chiefly rests — Joseph Andrews 
(1742), Tom Jones (1749), and Amelia (1751). Joseph Andrews 
was begun in ridicule of Richardson's Pamela, the sentimentality 
of which provoked the scornful laughter of Fielding. He set 
about writing a parody on that book : Joseph Andrews, the brother 
of Pamela Andrews, was to be exposed to the advances of the lady 
of the house in which he was employed, as his sister had suffered 

from those of the gay Mr. B in Richardson's novel; but 

in the end Joseph was also to have his ' Virtue rewarded. " Field- 
ing soon forgot his original intention, however, developed an 
exceedingly human and delightful plot, and created one of the 
great characters of English fiction, Parson Adams. 

In his next novel, Tom Jones, Fielding produced a masterpiece. 
Tom Jones is the story of a healthy youth from childhood to 
manhood, whose native strength of character finally triumphs 
over occasional lamentable weaknesses of conduct. Though 
marred here and there by the coarseness of an outspoken and 
none too delicate age, this novel is eminently sane and vigorous 
and holds its own to-day among the supreme works of prose 
fiction in the world's literature. Fielding's last novel, Amelia, 
is the story of the patience and goodness of a wife whose thrift- 
less husband, a captain in the British army, brought suffering to 
his family through his passion fcr gambling, as a result of which 
he spent much time in the debtors' prison. As the hero of Tom 
Jones was in part drawn from Fielding's own life, the heroine of 



260 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



his third novel reflects the beautiful character of Fielding's wife, 
to whom he was devotedly attached. 

In temperament and training Fielding was quite the opposite 
of Richardson. Possessing a keen sense of humor, full of boister- 
ous animal spirits, descended from the landed gentry, classically 
and legally trained, and having an intimate knowledge of London 
life, Fielding brought to his work of novel-writing wide experience 
with human nature and extensive learning. He understood 
thoroughly "the animal called man," and he could depict him as 
he was. He divided his novels into books after the epic fashion, 
commented on the action in little introductory chapters in the 
manner of a classical chorus, and dealt with his characters in a 
way that suggests the comic dramatists of the preceding century. 
In his greatest novel, Tom Jones, character and incident, says 
Professor Cross, "are brought into equilibrium." 1 Where Rich- 
ardson was sentimental, Fielding was humorous or satirical or 
matter-of-fact; where Richardson appealed to prudential motives, 
Fielding made it clear that virtue is its own reward in the peace 
of mind that follows, and that vice brings a troubled conscience 
to the evildoer. He does not apologize for his characters or gloss 
over their defects; they are, as in life, a compound of good and 
evil. He makes his novels end well, for he was too much of an 
optimist to do otherwise; he disliked sickly sentimentality, and 
in blatant professions of goodness he suspected a latent hypocrisy. 
He asserted more than once, indeed, that it is the duty of a novel- 
ist to unmask hypocrisy, to expose vice, and in general to paint 
men and women as they are. 

Fielding is not the delicate psychologist that Richardson is: 
he cannot minutely examine and report in detail on the emotions. 
Tender he is when he touches on the real crises of life, for he had 
a warm and generous heart, and he had a sense of infinite pity 
for the sufferings of the innocent; but his preeminently mascu- 
line nature made him less successful in portraying women. Rich- 
ardson's women are more convincing than his men; Fielding's 



* Cross: Development of the English Novel, p. 51. 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 261 

men are truer to life than his women. Richardson gave us the 
first realistic novel of sentiment, Fielding the first realistic novel 
of humor: both gave us the novel of manners, Richardson from 
the inside, Fielding more from the outside, As pictures of actual 
life Fielding's works impress us to-day as more modern and 
universal. Such characters as Tom Jones and Squire Western 
are as lifelike as actual people of our acquaintance. 

Smollett and Sterne — Less significant in the development of 
the English novel than Richardson and Fielding, but noteworthy 
nevertheless as reflecting certain aspects of the new literary form, 
are Tobias Smollett and Lawrence Sterne. Tobias Smollett 
(1721-1771) was a Scotch surgeon who had spent several years 
on one of the ships of the British navy in quest of adventure before 
settling in London to practice his profession. Impressed by the 
success of Pamela and Joseph Andrews, Smollett tried his hand at 
fiction, and in 1748 published his first novel, Roderick Random, 
Two other works followed during the next four years, Peregrine 
Pickle and Ferdinand Count Fathom, Smollett's last and greatest 
novel, Humphrey Clinker, appeared in 1771, the year of his death. 
Smollett carried on in modified form the traditions of the picar- 
esque, or rogue novel, frankly acknowledging his indebtedness to 
Le Sage's Gil Bias. The novels of Smollett are "strings of adven- 
tures," the material for which is partly drawn from his own 
varied experiences on sea and land, but the realism of the charac- 
ters saves the stories from being simply novels of incident. Smol- 
lett is the first novelist to introduce real sailors, real ships, and the 
real atmosphere of the sea; he is, moreover, the first to make use 
of national types — Scotchmen, Irishmen, Welshmen, Jews, as 
well as Englishmen. 

Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), son of an Irish army-officer, 
was educated at Cambridge, entered the Church, was made 
prebendary of York, preached, traveled, and wrote two books 
which are usually called novels. The first of these is The Life 
and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, in several volumes which 
appeared from 1760 to 1767. This curious work purports to be 
the autobiography of Tristram Shandy, but the central personage 



262 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



is the old soldier, "my Uncle Toby," too tenderhearted to hurt a 
fly, who is one of the most clearly drawn characters in fiction. 
The book is constructed on no definite plan: the writer rambles 
on with his pretended reminiscences, breaks off when he pleases 
and resumes when the mood strikes him, fills up chapters with 
asterisks, dashes, index-hands, suddenly ends a chapter in the 
middle of a sentence, or leaves blank a chapter which the reader's 
imagination may supply. What entitles it to be called a novel 
is the realism of the character of Uncle Toby and his surroundings 
rather than the plot, which Sterne was never able to bring to an 
end. At heart Sterne was a practical j oker, and delighted to puzzle 
his readers with his whimsicalities. His other work, A Sentimental 
Journey, published the last year of his life, is an account of his 
travels in France and Italy and reveals the same oddities of mind 
and expression in his comment on persons and things. Throughout 
these two books striking proverbs occur: in A Sentimental Journey 
we find "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb/' which 
has often been mistaken for a Biblical quotation. The novel of 
whimsical hmnor and sentiment is Sterne's contribution to our 
literature. 

Minor Novelists. — The four writers just discussed — Richard- 
son, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne — are the founders of the 
English novel, and their influence is perceptible in the writings of 
the great standard novelists of the nineteenth century, such as 
Dickens and Thackeray. The contemporary imitators of Rich- 
ardson and Fielding were of course numerous. Of their immediate 
followers the most original is FRANCES BURNEY (afterwards 
Madame D'Arblay), whose Evelina (1778) — a clever story in the 
letter-form based on her observations of social London — is the first 
important society novel in English literature, creating a sensa- 
tion second only to that produced by Clarissa Harlowe years 
before. As a realistic picture of London society at that time Eve- 
lina is not only interesting reading to-day, but a valuable "human 
document" for the historian who would reconstruct the period. 
More striking as a work of genius is The Vicar of Wakefield of 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH which appeared in 1766, our first real domes- 



THE MIDDLE A.ND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 263 



tic novel, the influence of which upon the history of prose fiction 
has been very great. All these productions are essentially realistic, 
showing that the novel was the outgrowth of a quickened social 
sense and that the earliest novelists were students and portrayers 
of life at close range as they had observed it. So far we have found 
the domestic novel of sentiment, the realistic novel of humor, 
and the society novel. With the Romantic Revival, soon to be 
considered, there appeared several prose romances, such as Wal- 
pole's Castle of Otranto (1764) and Mrs. RadcliftVs Mysteries of 
Udolpho (1794), in which the weird and the unusual are given a 
realistic treatment. Reference will again be made to the romantic 
novel in the next chapter. 

II. JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE 

The most conspicuous figure of this period is Samuel Johnson, 
essayist, critic, biographer, talker. In an age of transition from 
Classicism, or literary conformity, to Romanticism, or poetic 
reaction against cold rules, Johnson stands for the literary tra- 
ditions of the Age of Pope. Around him were gathered in the 
famous "literary club" men of such varied genius and vocation 
as Goldsmith, Burke, Gibbon, Reynolds, Garrick, and the inde- 
fatigable Boswell. This group of eminent men looked up to John- 
son as literary dictator, and their attitude represented in general 
that of the English people, though the dawn of a new era in litera- 
ture was already at hand, bringing with it changed ideals in regard 
to man and nature. Not since the merry meetings at the Mermaid 
Tavern in the days of Shakespeare when "rare Ben Jonson" was 
literary oracle — not even in the Restoration days when John 
Dry den expounded literary law and gospel at Will's Coffee- 
house — had there been such fine talk as that of Johnson and his 
circle as recorded by Boswell in his Life of Johnson. To several 
of the main figures in that group of men we must now give our 
attention. 

SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784) 

His Life. — In the sleepy cathedral town of Lichfield Samuel Johnson was 
born in 1709, son of Michael Johnson, a bookseller. He was a sickly child, 



264 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 




SAMUEL JOHNSON 



with a taint of scrofula and a tendency to melancholy, but along with this 
tendency he inherited from his father a powerful frame and great physical 
endurance. As a boy he read enormously: "Sir," said he to Boswell in later 
life, "in my early years I read very hard; it is a sad reflection but a true one, 
that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now." At the Lichfield 
school young Johnson was noted for his proficiency in Latin, acquiring a 
speaking knowledge of that language before he went to Oxford. He doubt- 
less received the best part of his education in his father's bookshop, where 
there was a miscellaneous collection of standard literature, ancient and 
modern, some of which could not be found in the libraries of the English 
universities. In 1728 Johnson went to Oxford, matriculating at Pembroke 
College. He was miserably poor and he was proud; he had long fits of de- 
pression, which he strove to get rid of by what the Oxford tutors called 
"outbreaks against authority": these were in reality fights against the 
inner demon of melancholy. Naturally, therefore, his Oxford days were 
neither happy nor successful; he had, however, while there translated 
Pope's Messiah into Latin verse, and had read Law's Serious Call to a Holy 
Life, a work which made a lasting impression upon him. 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 2(35 



Johnson left Oxford in 1731 without a degree; he was in debt and his father 
was dead, the son receiving twenty pounds from the sale of the bookstore 
after the creditors were satisfied; he was now compelled to seek employ- 
ment. He tried schoolteaching, first as an assistant and then as head of 
an academy, but he was not successful. He had meanwhile undertaken 
literary hack-work for booksellers, translating, cataloguing, and the like. 
In the midst of these activities he had married in 1735 a Mrs. Porter, a 
widow nearly twice his age, to whom in spite of her unprepossessing appear- 
ance and manners he was deeply attached. His local means of livelihood 
having failed, Johnson set out for London in 1737 in company with David 
Garrick, one of his pupils at the Lichfield Academy, the school in which he 
had sunk Mrs. Porter's marriage portion of eight hundred pounds. He and 
David trudged along the dusty highway to London, master and pupil, both 
destined to be in twenty-five or thirty years from that time famous men. 
That early friendship lasted to the end. 

Now begins the long struggle for bread and recognition in the great 
metropolis, so feelingly reflected in that oft-quoted line from Johnson's 
poem called London, — 

Slow rises worth by poverty depressed. 

For the next few years Johnson did various kinds of literary work, living 
at first in obscure lodgings, fasting often for lack of the price of an humble 
dinner, walking the streets at night too poor to pay for a place to sleep. He 
had brought to London an unfinished tragedy, Irene, which he managed 
to complete and get put on at Drury Lane Theater through the kind offices 
of David Garrick, but it did not pay. Cave, the editor of the Gentleman's 
Magazine, engaged Johnson to help him by contributions, rewriting articles, 
reporting parliamentary debates, and book-reviewing. Then his poem 
London was published in 1738, and Pope's attention was called to the strug- 
gling young writer. And so he gradually won his way, until he was asked in 
1747 by some booksellers, or publishers, to write a Dictionary of the English 
Language. From this time on his position was assured. Johnson's wife 
died in 1752, a loss from which he was long in recovering. The publication 
of the Dictionary in 1755 made him famous as the foremost scholar and 
writer in England; Oxford and Dublin Universities finally gave him the 
degree of Doctor of Laws; and in 1762 the king bestowed upon him a pension 
of £300 a year. 

In 1763 Johnson first met James Boswell, a young Scotch lawyer. There 
has never been a more memorable meeting than this in literary history, for 
without Boswell we should not to-day have Johnson, and it is BoswelFs 
Johnson that we talk and write about. Boswell gives this account of the 
meeting: 



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"I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, 
of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, 'Don't tell him where I come 
from.' 'From Scotland,' cried Davies roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson' (said I), 
'I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.' 'That, sir,' roared 
Johnson, 'I find is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.' 
This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had set down I felt not a 
little embarrassed, and apprehensive of what might come next.'" 

This was the beginning of the twenty years of association between the 
hero and the hero-worshiper, which resulted in the most complete and 
interesting biography ever written. Boswell devoted himself almost wholly 
to Johnson, frequenting his lodgings in Fleet Street, following him about 
London, dining with him at the Mitre Tavern, listening to him talk at the 
club, accompanying him on his tour to Scotland, jotting down the words 
of the master even when they reflected on himself, and patiently enduring 
the old autocrat's irascible humors and blunt criticism. 

In 1764 the Literary Club was founded. Among its members were, besides 
Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter; Garrick, most famous 
of English actors; Burke, the orator; Gibbon, the historian; Sheridan, and 
Goldsmith. They met once a week at the Turk's Head Tavern; Johnson 
was the dominant figure and in such a congenial group at his best, full of 
lively talk, easy and natural, free from the stiffening Latinisms of his writ- 
ing. Much of Dr. Johnson's time during these later years of his life was 
spent with a cultured family named Thrale who welcomed him as a member 
of their hous ehold. He brought out an edition of Shakespeare in 1765 and in 
1781 the last volume in his series of biographies of the English poets. John- 
son died in 1784, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. 

His Personality. — Johnson's personality is more interesting 
than anything he wrote; it is hardly too much to say, thanks to 
Boswell's book, that Johnson the man is more familiarly known 
to us than any other English author. Macaulay, drawing his 
material from Boswell, has given us this vivid picture of him at 
a meeting of the Literary Club : 

"In the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the 
figures of those among whom we have been brought up, the gigantic body, 
the huge massy face seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, the 
black worsted stockings, the gray wig with the scorched foretop, the dirty 
hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the eyes and mouth 
moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form rolling; we heai 
it puffing; and then comes the 'Why, sir!' and the 'What then, sir?' and 
the 'No, sir!' and the 'You don't see your way through the question, sir!' " 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 267 



A dozen eccentricities come to mind at the mention of the great 
doctor's name: his enormous capacity for hot tea, satisfied by not 
fewer than thirteen cups in quick succession; his mutterings of 
prayers in Latin, and his absentmindedness at table which would 
cause him to reach down and snatch off a lady's slipper; his touch- 
ing and counting of lamp posts as he walked and his collecting of 
pieces of orange peel; his tapping of coffins, his melancholy fear 
of death, and his superstitious dread of ghosts; his strong preju- 
dices, particularly his prejudice against all things Scotch, which 
led him to remark that "the noblest prospect which a Scotchman 
ever sees, is the high-road that leads him to England." 

As a man Johnson had four or five marked characteristics: 
moral soundness, courage and perseverance, sincerity, generosity. 
He was a profoundly religious man in an age of spiritual indiffer- 
ence, and the purity of his life is a refreshing contrast to the moral 
laxity of many of his contemporaries. His physical courage was 
as great as his moral : he more than once gave an insulting publisher 
a sound beating; and when Macpherson, the author of Ossian, 
declared that he would chastise Johnson for saying that his work 
was a forgery, the old man provided himself with a big oak stick. 
Johnson's early life furnishes an admirable example of persever- 
ance, all the more impressive when we remember that he was nat- 
urally indolent and predisposed to melancholy. The Dictionary 
alone represented a prodigious amount of work; it was carried 
through without "one word of encouragement, one smile of favor," 
as Johnson remarks in his famous Letter to Chesterfield. Many 
are the instances of his kindness of heart : the benevolent support 
for years of a lot of queer outcasts — a blind old woman, an obscure 
physician, a negro servant, and others — at his house; the gladness 
he brought to the hearts of homeless orphans in the streets of 
the great city, into whose dirty little fists he placed pennies while 
they were asleep. He had, as Goldsmith aptly says, "nothing 
of the bear but the skin." 

His Works and Literary Characteristics. — The principal works 
of Johnson are: London (1738) and The Vanity of Human Wishes 
(1749), two poems in heroic couplets in imitation of the third 



268 



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and tenth satires of Juvenal; The Rambler and The Idler, periodi- 
cal moral essays modeled after The Spectator) Rasselas (1759), 
an allegorical novel written during the evenings of one week to 
defray the expenses of his mother's funeral; and the Lives of the 
Poets (1779-81). 

The Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755 after 
seven years of labor, is the first comprehensive dictionary of our 
speech. Johnson's extensive acquaintance with classical and 
modern literature, together with his knowledge of human nature 
and his great common sense, enabled him to give good practical 
definitions of words, but on etymology he was weak, the modern 
science of philology being undeveloped. His prejudices and fond- 
ness for big words led to some amusing definitions: "Pension' ' is 
defined as "an allowance made to any one without an equivalent: 
in England it is understood to mean pay given to a State hireling 
for treason to his country." Characteristically enough, Johnson 
declined to modify this definition when he was himself given a 
pension. He added to his definition of "Oats" the comment, "a 
grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scot- 
land supports the people." "Network" he explained as "anything 
reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices be- 
tween the intersections." The Letter to Lord Chesterfield declining 
his belated offer of sponsorship of the Dictionary is one of the best 
things Johnson ever wrote, a model of polite irony and a declara- 
tion of independence from aristocratic patronage. Henceforth 
authors were to be free. 

Of Johnson's works the most readable to-day is his Lives of 
the Poets, a work in which his power as a critic appears at its best, 
though revealing the limitations of a follower of the "school of 
Pope"; Johnson cared little for blank verse and did scant justice 
to poets, except Shakespeare, before the time of Dryden. John- 
son's style is simpler in the Lives than in earlier works like The 
Rambler and Rasselas, in both of which he had a didactic purpose. 
"Johnsonese" — as the language of his essays and his romance 
has been labeled — is a ponderous, Latinistic, antithetical style, 
full of words like those used in the definition of "network." "If 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 269 



you were to write a fable about little fishes," Goldsmith once 
said to the literary autocrat, "you would make the little fishes 
talk like whales." Johnson's colloquial style was direct and 
simple enough, but when he wrote, his language became formal 
and balanced. Though he wrote two respectable poems, Johnson 
is not a poet, but a prose writer in an age of prose; he is a belated 
classicist, the last of his tribe, at a time when the tide of reaction 
was setting in strong toward Romanticism. 

BoswelTs Life of Johnson, — The Life of Samuel Johnson, by 
James Boswell, is a voluminous record of the sayings and doings 
of the great man by a devoted disciple. It is one of the most 
fascinating books in the history of English literature, and has 
outlasted in popular interest all the formal utterances of Johnson. 
Here we have a familiar picture, worked out in great detail and 
in utmost frankness, of the daily life of the hero — his talk at the 
club, his opinions on all manner of subjects, his rebukes of Boswell, 
BoswelPs flunkeyism (as Carlyle calls it), his eternal notebook, 
and his unflagging idolatry. The result is a chatty, companion- 
able book which one may take up at odd moments, dip into, and 
put down at will, certain to carry away a witty saying, a moral 
maxim, a wise comment on men and books, a valuable bit of advice, 
many grains of sound common sense. It is a loving transcript 
of a varied and rich personality, with which every young person 
should make a first-hand acquaintance. Whether the student 
reads much of Johnson's own writings or not, he should not fail 
to read BoswelPs Life of Johnson. 

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774) 

His Life. — Oliver Goldsmith was born in the village of Pallas, Ireland, 
in 1728. When he was two years old, his father, a vicar with a large family, 
moved to Lissoy, afterwards celebrated as the "sweet Auburn ,, of The De- 
serted Village. After some local schooling during which he had the reputa- 
tion of being a dull pupil, young Goldsmith, by the advice of his * 'Uncle 
Contarine," was sent in 1745 to Trinity College, University of Dublin. His 
college career was marked by various irregularities, poverty, and a fair 
degree of devotion to the classics. He received his B. A. degree in 1749. 
The next two years lie spent at home, ostensibly preparing to enter the 



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Church; but, so the story goes, the bishop declined to ordain him because 
he appeared before him in bright scarlet breeches. Goldsmith then decided 
to study law in London, his good Uncle Contarine having given him money 
for this purpose. He gambled or gave away the money with his usual thrift- 
lessness, and returned home. Again his uncle came to the rescue and fur- 
nished him means to study medicine at Edinburgh. Here he remained 
two years, writing and singing Irish songs and telling funny stories to the 
great delight of his companions, and incidentally studying a little medi- 
cine. In 1754 he decided to go to the continent to complete his medical 
education. 

The next two years he spent in Leyden, Paris, and possibly at Padua, 
attending lectures and wandering over parts of Holland, France, Italy, and 
Germany. Little is known of his life on the continent except what he has 
told, to the effect that he walked over southern France and through north- 
ern Italy playing his flute and engaging in "disputations" with scholars at 
Italian universities, where he, as successful disputant, would often get a 
dinner and a night's lodging as a reward for his learning. Goldsmith re- 
turned to London in 1756. 

Goldsmith's literary career began in 1757 as a contributor to The Monthly 
Review and general hack-writer for various publishers. His first important 
piece of writing, An Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe, 
came out in 1759, and attracted favorable comment. In 1761 Goldsmith met 
Johnson and was soon to be one of that circle of illustrious men who in 1764 
organized the Literary Club. Johnson's friendship was invaluable to Gold- 
smith, for the great man introduced him to many influential persons and 
came to his relief from time to time when the impecunious poet and essayist 
was in dire straits. That very year of 1764 Johnson did him a memorable 
turn: Goldsmith was in trouble with his landlady because he was unable 
to pay his rent; hearing of it, Johnson sent his friend a guinea, which the 
thirsty author immediately spent in wine. When Johnson arrived he found 
Goldsmith entertaining the landlady. In reply to the Doctor's inquiries 
as to whether he had anything ready for the press, Goldsmith mentioned 
a novel he had finished; Johnson at once recognized its merit and hastened 
to a publisher who gave him sixty pounds for the manuscript. This was 
The Vicar of Wakefield, which, when published two years later, greatly 
increased Goldsmith's reputation. 

The last ten years of his life were spent in the writing of a variety of works, 
from history to drama. Goldsmith died in 1774 in his forty-seventh year 
at his lodgings in the Court of the Middle Temple and was buried just 
outside the Temple Church, a little off Fleet Street, a thoroughfare forever 
associated with him and his learned friend, Dr. Johnson. The day he died 
hundreds of the poor of London, with whom he had shared his meager in- 
come, crowded up the stairs to his lodging weeping. Sir Joshua Reynolds, 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 271 



the great painter, was so deeply affected that he threw aside his pencil 
for that day, a very unusual tribute from a man who boasted of passing 
"no day without a line." A monument to Goldsmith's memory, for which 
Johnson composed the inscription in Latin, was a little later put up by the 
Literary Club in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. 

His Personality. — Homely of face and awkward in manner, 
Oliver Goldsmith won his way to the affections of men by his 
genial good nature, his sympathies, his humor and pathos, and 
his human frailties. There was much of the typical Bohemian 
about him: picturesque and careless in dress, utterly improvident, 
droll in speech and action, generous in spirit, he is, as Thackeray 
says, "the most beloved of English writers." He was an Irishman, 
and throughout his life he showed the versatility and the sentiment 
of the Celtic nature — "always ready to react against the despotism 
of fact," to quote Matthew Arnold's apt phrase. Chronically 
in debt — at his death he owed two thousand pounds — Goldsmith 
somehow managed to get people to trust him. Blundering in 
speech and sometimes saying foolish things, especially when he 
tried to shine at the Club by arguing with Dr. Johnson, he also 
said some very clever things; as, for instance, this in regard to 
Boswell: "He is only a burr; Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in 
sport, and he has the faculty of sticking." It was Garrick who 
said of Goldsmith that he 

Wrote like an angel and talked like Poor Pol. 

That is a more epigrammatic than truthful statement, however, 
for when unembarrassed he could hold his own with the best of 
them. To know Goldsmith the man one must read his poetry 
and prose, for in them his lovable personality is reflected to an 
unusual degree. 

His Works and Style. — Goldsmith was poet, essayist, novelist, 
and dramatist. He also compiled several histories, but they do 
not count except for their pleasant style. His principal works 
are: The Traveler (1764) and The Deserted Village (1770), his two 
long poems; The Citizen of the World (1762), a series of essays in 



272 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



the form of letters from a fictitious Chinese official visiting Lon- 
don, the best known of which is the inimitable portrait of Beau 
Tibbs; The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), the first genuine domestic 
novel; and two comedies, The Good-natured Man (1768) and She 
Stoops to Conquer (1773). 

Goldsmith's two long poems are among the most popular de- 
scriptive poetry in our language, his pictures of places and persons 
being as clear-cut as Chaucer's and even more charming. They 
are based on his own experiences and observations, reflecting his 
travels and his boyhood memories. The Deserted Village, in par- 
ticular, brings vividly before us home scenes which are suggestive 
in outline at least of the surroundings of many a country-bred 
youth of the older time — the village parson and the schoolmaster, 
the summer evenings, the games, the simple joys of the country- 
side. These poems are written in rhyming couplets, but so varied 
are the pauses and so natural the diction that they cannot be 
classified with the artificial verse of the "school of Pope." The 
truth is, Goldsmith's poetry is partly romantic in tone, reflecting 
that love of country and nature which, as we shall presently see, is 
so marked a characteristic of the newer verse. The village preacher 
is, of course, reminiscent of Goldsmith's own father — "passing 
rich on forty pounds a year," and as delightfully indifferent to 
conventionalities and money-making as was his distinguished son. 
The Reverend Doctor Primrose, in The Vicar of Wakefield, is 
again the elder Goldsmith, guileless and gullible, making the best 
of bad bargains. The Vicar of Wakefield marks an epoch in the 
history of the novel — the transition from domestic adventure of 
a somewhat coarser or over-sentimental sort to refined, quiet 
family life in the country. 

She Stoops to Conquer, Goldsmith's best comedy, is based on a 
boyhood exploit — a night spent by young Oliver in a private house 
to which he had been directed by a practical joker who assured 
him it was an inn. From this suggestion of a plot Goldsmith 
developed the laughable situations and incidents in She Stoops 
to Conquer; or the Mistakes of a Night. This play has never lost 
its popularity, and is as amusing on the stage to-day as it was 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 273 



the first time it was presented. In these delightful comedies 
Goldsmith made a distinct contribution to the English drama, 
causing a reaction against the silly sentimental drama, which 
had really lost interest for people of taste, by introducing a sane 
and wholesome kind of social comedy. It remained for Richard 
Brinsley Sheridan, Goldsmith's young contemporary, to perfect 
this species of comedy in his brilliant society plays, The Rivals 
and the School for Scandal. 

Versatility of genius and charm of style — these are the evident 
characteristics of Goldsmith the writer. "He touched almost 
every kind of writing, and he touched nothing that he did not 
adorn," is Dr. Johnson's just apprisal of his worth in the famous 
inscription. Wholesome in the choice of his subjects, he is equally 
wholesome in the treatment of them. Purity of diction goes along 
with ease and grace of style. His humor is gentle but infectious, 
and in his comedies it bursts into laughter; his pathos touches 
the springs of tears, causes sympathy and then pity, that child 
of sympathy. In his humor there is "malice toward none and 
charity for all." The humanity of Goldsmith pervades all he wrote 
with an indefinable charm, and his writings, particularly his 
essays, are a model of easy and elegant style. 

EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797) 

His Life. — Edmund Burke, a fellow-member of Goldsmith's in the Literary 
Club and a warm friend of his and Johnson's, was born in Dublin in 1729. 
After graduating at Trinity College, Dublin, young Burke, whose father 
was an attorney, studied law in London. He had a growing love for litera- 
ture, and during these years he read widely outside of the law, spent much 
time in quiet rural retreats, and did some writing on literary and philo- 
sophical subjects. In this way he laid the foundation of that immense knowl- 
edge of books and men which distinguished his political career. So indiffer- 
ent, indeed, did he seem toward purely legal studies and mere political 
preferment at this time that his father, disappointed and angered, with- 
drew his allowance, and Burke found himself in sore financial straits. Forced 
to rely upon his pen for a living, he published in 1756 his treatise on The 
Sublime and the Beautiful, begun before he was of age. This was followed 
by other essays, more or less heavy and imitative. Pleased at the favorable 
reception of these writings by the public, his father relented so far as to 
send him money. 



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In 1765 Burke became private secretary to Lord Rockingham, head of 
the new Whig ministry, and with this appointment his political career 
really began. Not long after this he was elected to Parliament, and was, 
with varying fortunes, a member of that body until within a few years of his 
death. Meanwhile he had purchased an estate at Beaconsfield, in Buck- 
inghamshire, where with his family he spent much time each year. In 
1764 he joined the Literary Club, in which he became a leading spirit, being 
honored by his colleagues, whether Whig or Tory, for his great intellectual 
gifts, his power in debate, and his amiability of manner. Burke was one 
of the few members of the Club who dared to argue with Dr. Johnson; and 
though the latter called him "a cursed Whig," he nevertheless greatly 
admired Burke's mental powers and along with the rest sincerely loved 
the man. Burke's fame as an orator was established by his speeches in the 
Parliamentary debates on taxation of the American colonies, and reached 
its climax in the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings in 1787, so graphi- 
cally described by Macaulay. His active service as a statesman came to 
an end in 1794, and three years later he died at his Beaconsfield estate and 
was buried there. 

His Works and Characteristics, — Burke's two earlier works, 
A Vindication of Natural Society and A Philosophical Inquiry 
into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, are 
essays in the somewhat labored, classical style of the day. Out 
of a number of other works — speeches and political essays — two 
in particular rank among our greatest prose classics, the Speech 
on Conciliation with America (1775) and Reflections on the French 
Revolution (1790). The first of these because of its interest to 
Americans and its admirable literary qualities has long been a 
familiar classic in the schools. In this famous speech Burke's 
fundamental proposition is that the American colonies can be 
held only by granting to them the opportunity of taxing themselves 
rather than by imposing taxes upon them. He believed that 
taxation without representation is unjust, that representation, 
owing to their distance from the mother country, was impossible, 
and that coercion was inexpedient. The only solution, therefore, 
lay in conciliation; he trusted the result to the loyalty of a kindred 
people. The right of taxation he does not discuss, but bases his 
argument on expediency alone: the truest wisdom, he asserts, 
lies in magnanimity toward the American colonies. This is the 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 275 



gist of the speech, elaborated with an array of details and a force 
of argument truly wonderful. As we know, Burke's advice was 
not heeded, and the freedom of the colonies soon followed. 

In the Reflections on the French Revolution Burke, disgusted 
and horrified at the excesses of that reign of blood and missing 
the real significance of the movement, is the defender of the es- 
tablished order. Certain passages in this impassioned essay — 
notably the one on Marie Antoinette, whom Burke had seen in 
her fresh young beauty — are among the most poetic in the whole 
range of our prose literature. 

The truth is, Burke was at heart a poet. It would not be far 
wrong to call him a poetic political philosopher. He had a passion, 
as some one has said, for order and a passion for justice; he had, 
moreover, an immense fund of knowledge. This passion for order 
and justice and this great knowledge he lighted up with a splen- 
did imagination, which clothed itself at times in almost oriental 
richness of imagery. Metaphor follows metaphor and the stately 
periods move on in gorgeous procession to the climax. His speeches 
were often on too high a plane for his audiences and consequently 
failed in immediate effect: he saw too far ahead, cared too little 
for temporary success or personal preferment, to be understood 
by the practical politicians. Hence his principal schemes, though 
ultimately justifying his wisdom, failed of adoption at the moment, 
and Burke usually found himself in what men of larger foresight 
have come to call the "saving minority." 

Throughout his speeches occur sentences so fundamentally 
true that they stick in our memory as wise political maxims: 
"Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom, and 
a great empire and little minds go ill together;" "Whenever a 
separation is made between liberty and justice, neither is In my 
opinion safe." Burke's writing is saturated with thought., . as 
Matthew Arnold said; and his knowledge and his imagination 
were as great as his thought. Dr. Johnson's comment was, as 
usual, apt : "Burke does not talk from a desire for distinction, but 
because his mind is full." His three hours' speech on Conciliation 
with the. American Colonies (which every young person ought 



27(5 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



carefully to analyze as a model of structure) and his nine-hours' 
impeachment speech at the trial of Warren Hastings would alone 
entitle him to be called one of the world's great orators. Three 
great occasions afforded Burke an opportunity for impressive 
utterance: the crisis between England and her American colonies, 
the administration of India, and the French Revolution. Seldom, 
indeed, do three such political crises occur within the lifetime of 
one man; seldom does a nation have so great an orator, thinker, 
and philosopher as Burke to discuss them. Throughout his life 
he was true to his ideals, and his writings are therefore as much 
a literary heritage as they are rich in political wisdom. 

Other Prose Writers of the Period. — In this age of high excel- 
lence in prose there are many writers whom the limited scope of 
this work will not permit us to consider — historians, philosophers, 
letter-writers, orators. There was, moreover, a good deal of dra- 
matic writing, but it had little genuine literary quality, being, as 
a rule, commonplace in theme and in expression. Since the 
Restoration plays of the later seventeenth century, the drama 
had degenerated, after the moral reaction against the licentious but 
brilliant Congrevian Comedy of Manners, into a species of sen- 
timental domestic comedy or into the light social farce, clever 
enough, but without lasting merit. In the present period the 
wholesome and bright comedies of Goldsmith, already mentioned, 
and Sheridan's two plays, The Rivals and The School for Scandal, 
are memorable. David Garrick was the great actor, but he was not 
a creative genius. This is, indeed, an age of clever actors and 
mediocre dramatists. Among the orators, besides Burke, there 
were Pitt, Fox, and Sheridan, men whose immediate appeal was 
greater than Burke's but whose place in literature is far below 
his. Among the letter-writers the most interesting are Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu, Lord Chesterfield, and Horace Walpole. The 
great historians are Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson. Of these 
Gibbon is the most distinctively literary, and demands a brief 
consideration. 

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794). — Born at Putney, educated at 
Westminster School, London, and at Madgalen College, Oxford, 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 277 



where he says he passed his time unprofitably, Edward Gibbon 
spent much of his life on one great work — The Decline and Fall 
of the Roman Empire. The conception came to him in 1764 when 
on a visit to Rome: 

It was at Rome on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing among 
the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers 
in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the 
city first started to my mind. 

This mighty work in six volumes was not finished until twenty- 
three years later at Lausanne in Switzerland; in this memorable 
passage, which will serve as an example of Gibbon's lofty style, 
he tells of the scene and describes his emotions as he finished the 
task: 

It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between 
the hours of eleven and twelve that I wrote the last line of the last page in 
a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen I took several 
turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect 
of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the 
sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, 
and all nature was silent. I will not describe the first emotions of joy on 
the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame; 
but my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over 
my mind by the idea that I had taken my everlasting leave of an old and 
agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my 
history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious. 

The scope of this great work is nearly fourteen centuries — 
from the beginning of the reign of Trojan in 98 A. D. to the fall 
of Constantinople in 1453. Gibbon's immense learning, his 
ability to bring buried centuries before the mind in a series of 
wonderfully vivid pictures, and his freedom from partisanship — 
the modern historical sense — make him one of the world's supreme 
historians. The one serious defect of the history lies in the fail- 
ure of Gibbon to give sufficient credit to Christianity as a potent 
factor in mediaeval civilization. His style is always sustained: 
the periods are long and rolling, the diction sonorous, so that in 



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reading it aloud one is reminded of the measured tones of the 
classically trained old-fashioned orator. The Memoirs of Gibbon 
are among the most interesting biographical contributions in 
our literature. 

III. BEGINNINGS OF ROMANTICISM 

What is Romanticism? — We have seen that much of the eight- 
eenth century was dominated by Classicism, or conformity to 
cold, regular, and "correct" rules — the movement which began 
mainly through French influence in the Restoration Period and 
which found in Dryden, Pope, and Johnson its most notable 
representatives. In the latter part of the eighteenth century a 
reaction against Classicism is clearly manifest, and this new move- 
ment is known as Romanticism. Indeed, even in the days of 
Pope, in the heyday of the Augustans, there were signs here and 
there of this reaction, but they were exceptional. In general 
Romanticism means a renewal of interest in the emotional and 
imaginative nature of man, a reassertion of the deeper poetic 
instincts, a restoration of feeling to its proper place in literature, 
which had been so long cramped by artificial rules. Romanti- 
cism means the return of enthusiasm and the outburst of new 
poetic fire; we shall presently see the new poetry at its best in 
the Romantic group composed of Wordsworth, Scott, Shelley, 
Byron, Keats, Coleridge. Now we have to do with the pioneer 
poets of Romanticism — Thomson, Gray, Blake, Cowper, Collins, 
Chatterton, Burns. We shall better undertsand the work of 
these pioneers in the new movement and be prepared to interpret 
their successors, the genuine romantic poets, if we fix clearly 
in our minds several well-defined characteristics of the new 
poetry. 

1. A delight in the quiet charm of country sights and sounds as 
opposed to the older absorption in the artificial life of the "town." 
This reflection of rural nature in the poetry is the way in which 
Romanticism begins to manifest itself. It is in reality a redis- 
covery of nature, so long forgotten amid the trivialities of city 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 279 

life. Delight in the serener aspects of nature gradually passed 
into a rapt admiration for the wilder scenery of mountain and sea. 

2. A revival of interest in the mystery, romance, and picturesque- 
ness of the M iddle Ages. The name ' 'romantic" is derived from this 
characteristic, for the Middle Ages furnished an immense number 
of stories, ballads, epics, called in general "romances," the word 
referring originally to metrical stories based on legends found in 
Latin or in one of the romance languages. Out of this interest 
in mediaeval literature grew much of the weird, ghostly, and gro- 
tesque element in certain of our romantic poets and prose writers. 
Along with the romance contribution proper there is considerable 
obligation to oriental and Celtic sources. 

3. Sympathy for the lowly and the oppressed, and in consequence 
a higher regard for the rights of the individual. This is the humani- 
tarian aspect of Romanticism that connects it with the French 
Revolution. The worth and dignity of man find expression in 
Burns and Wordsworth; childhood at last gets a place in poetry, 
notably in Blake; and the lower animals are made subjects of 
poetic sentiment, as in Blake and Burns and Cowper. The cottage 
and the humble peasant receive sympathetic treatment. There 
is a gi eater liberalism of thought, which shakes or overthrows 
old social and political systems. 

4. A return to the Elizabethans for materials and methods in 
poetry. Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton are read afresh, with 
the result that considerable imitation, conscious and unconscious, 
of the older poets is to be found among the romanticists. Spenser 
in particular comes into favor again; there is a fondness for archaic 
words; the old English ballads are collected and eagerly read. 
Quite as important as the influence of the Elizabethan revival 
on the subject matter and style of poetry is the influence on the 
form of the verse. The heroic couplet had held undisputed sway 
since the days of Dry den, but now old meters began to reappear — ■ 
the Spenserian stanza, blank verse, the ballad stanza, the sonnet, 
and many lyric measures. 

These four leading characteristics of the romantic movement 
may be more briefly summarized as the Return to Nature, Interest 



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in the Middle Ages, Sympathy with Man (out of which childhood 
and the home find a prominent place in literature), and the 
Reversion to the Spirit of the Elizabethans. In general, the supremacy 
of common sense yields to the supremacy of the imagination. We 
are now ready to trace the new movement from its faint beginnings 
in the mid-eighteenth century to its splendid climax in poetry 
and prose fiction in the first quarter of the nineteenth. The 
stream of romantic poetry was never really interrupted in Scot- 
land; it was in England that Classicism had for a century chilled 
the genial current of song. From a group of Scotch poets — 
Thomson, Beattie, Blair, and Ramsay — the romantic movement 
receives its earliest impulse in England, while the continuity of 
the northern imagination is virtually unbroken from the ballad 
writers to the "Wizard of the North/' Sir Walter Scott. 

The Scotch Poets.— JAMES THOMSON (1700-1748) was born in 
the lowlands of Scotland, educated at the University of Edinburgh, 
went to London in 1725, and spent the rest of his life in and near 
the metropolis. He was a disciple of Pope, but his best poetry 
shows an appreciation of rural nature which makes him a pioneer 
of the romantic movement. The Seasons (1730), his longest 
poem, written in blank verse and full of nature-description, is 
usually regarded as the first to reflect the newer spirit in poetry. 
More romantic still is The Castle of Indolence (1748), written in 
the Spenserian stanza, abounding in archaic words, and enchant- 
ingly languorous in tone. In form and spirit it is distinctly imi- 
tative of Spenser. 

JAMES BEATTIE (1735-1803), a Scotch schoolmaster of Aber- 
deen, wrote one famous poem, The Minstrel, on the progress of the 
poet's mind and imagination. It is really an autobiography, and 
has been called an "humble ancestor of Wordsworth's Prelude." 
The verse is melodious and shows sensitiveness to the varied 
aspects of nature. He uses the Spenserian stanza and, like Thom- 
son, imitates "the poets' poet." 

ROBERT BLAIR (1699-1746), a Scotch clergyman, wrote a poem 
in blank verse, The Grave (1743), which for dramatic vigor of 
expression and vividness of detail — to say nothing of the "church- 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 281 

yard atmosphere" — is suggestive of the later Elizabethans and 
distinctly "romantic." 

ALLAN RAMSAY (1686-1758), an Edinburgh bookseller of genial 
temperament, is the editor and author of a number of volumes of 
Scottish verse, but his reputation as a poet rests to-day chiefly 
on The Gentle Shepherd, a pastoral poem full of pleasing rustic 
scenes depicted in harmonious language. He is one of the best- 
beloved of Scotch poets, honored with a monument by his own 
city and affectionately spoken of as the "gentle shepherd." 

Another singer of Scotland, noted for his lyric gift and as a 
precursor of Burns, is ROBERT FERGUSSON (1750-1774) to whom 
the greater poet more than once pays tribute by using his cruder 
songs as models for his own more exquisite lyrics. 

William Collins (1721-1759).— Born at Chichester, in southern 
England, educated at Winchester and Oxford, William Collins 
early showed a genius for writing delicately sensitive lyric verse. 
Disappointed at the indifference shown his little volumes of 
Odes, published in 1746, Collins gradually lapsed into a melan- 
choly which deepened into hopeless insanity. He left several 
odes which are among the most artistic and flute-like in all litera- 
ture. The "Ode to the Passions," "Ode to Evening," "Ode on the 
Popular Superstitions of the Highlands," his pathetic ode to Thom- 
son, of whom he was a disciple — "In yonder Grave a Druid Lies," 
— his exquisite "Song from Shakespeare's Cymbeline," and the 
little ode beginning — ■ 

How sleep the brave who sink to rest 

By all their country's wishes blest- 
are pastoral lyrics of very high order, and have distinguished 
Collins as the most musical of the pioneers of Romanticism. A 
French critic thinks that since Ariel's song in the Tempest, "Full 
fathom five," "nothing had appeared comparable in its kind to 
the elfin music of this stanza written early in 1746 1" 1 



1 Seccombe's The Age of Johnson, p. 248. 



282 



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By fairy hands their knell is rung; 
By forms unseen their dirge is sung; 
There honour comes, a pilgrim grey, 
To deck the turf that wraps their clay; 
And freedom shall awhile repair, 
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there! 

Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770).— Thomas Chatterton, the 
"marvelous boy" whose tragic fate has given a pathetic interest 
to his excellent verse, was the son of a Bristol schoolmaster. 
From early childhood he took delight in old folios and antiquities, 
spending much time in a neighboring church reading the ancient 
charters deposited there. He read widely in the chronicles of 
Holinshed and Geoffrey of Monmouth and was fond of Chaucer 
and Spenser. From these he acquired a vocabulary of obsolete 
words and a quaintness of diction which he employed in certain 
poems, mostly in the old ballad-measure, given out by him as 
having been written by a fifteenth-century monk named Thomas 
Rowley whose parchments he had discovered in an old chest. 
Even so clever a man as Horace Walpole, to whom Chatterton 
sent several of the "Rowley parchments," was deceived for a 
while. Chatterton, who had been apprenticed to an attorney for 
several years without showing any real interest in law, now set 
out for London to begin in earnest his literary career. At first 
he was successful; then the magazines declined to accept several 
poems which are now highly regarded; the youthful poet, without 
money and without friends, became depressed at his waning suc- 
cess. On the verge of actual starvation and too proud to beg, 
Chatterton tore into small fragments a large amount of manuscript 
one night in his wretched Holborn Street garret and poisoned 
himself. He was not quite eighteen years old. 

This high-strung, solitary boy, with his passionate love of 
antique song and his morbid tendency to gloomy fancies, is a 
typical pioneer romanticist, embodying the unrest, the mystery, 
the strangeness of that awakened interest in the Middle Ages 
which a little later appeared more sanely and more beautifully 
in Keats and Coleridge. He felt that he would not get a hearing 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 283 



unless he gave to his poetry a mediaeval flavor, and so he claimed 
to be a discoverer of old manuscripts. His ballads lack the sim- 
plicity of the old; they are romantic ballads, precursors of "Chris- 
tabel" and the "Ancient Mariner." The best poems of Chatter- 
ton are the "Bristowe Tragedie," "An Excelente Balade of 
Charitie," "Song to Aella." The small volume of his verse has 
been read with an increasing sense of his worth as a poet mingled 
with regret and pity at his brief, pathetic life. 

Macpherson and the "Poems of Ossian" (1736-1796). — Another 
curious literary forgery about this time was a series of poetic 
fragments which James Macpherson, a Highland schoolmaster, 
claimed to have translated from Ossian, the traditional Gaelic 
poet. These were so favorably received that Macpherson pub- 
lished during the next three years two epics, Fingal (1762) and 
Temora (1763). An Ossian craze followed: Macpherson was 
acclaimed a literary discoverer, given a pension, and honored 
by critics at home and abroad, with one notable exception — Dr. 
Samuel Johnson. The sturdy old classicist bluntly charged Mac- 
pherson with forgery and demanded the original manuscripts. 
A war of words followed, but the manuscripts were not forth- 
coming. Macpherson threatened Johnson with personal violence, 
and that is the time the old gentleman walked the London streets 
with a stout oak staff; the enemy, however, was not visible. It 
is pretty generally agreed that Macpherson's Ossian is at least 
based on fragments of old Celtic legends, but most of the elabor- 
ate highly-colored prose known as the Poems of Ossian is the work 
of James Macpherson. To us it seems extremely monotonous 
with its weird and lurid imagery and its general vagueness, though 
there is a kind of wild beauty about it. Macpherson caught the 
spirit' of the Celtic bards with wonderful effect, and Ossian, 
imitation though it was, became widely popular and had a marked 
influence on the romantic movement. 

Percy and the Ballads (1729-1811). —Bishop Thomas Percy, 
of Dromore, Ireland, published in 1765 a collection of folk songs 
and ballads in three volumes which he called Reliques of Ancient 
English Poetry, the first attempt at bringing together the most 



284 



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popular of the old Scottish and English ballads. Larger and more 
scholarly collections now exist — notably that of Professor Child, 
of Harvard, — but Percy's book, which contains such famous 
ballads as "Chevy Chace," the "Nut Brown Mayde," "Battle 
of Otterburn," "Sir Patrick Spens," and others, long ago became 
a classic in our literature. Perhaps no other one book had such 
an influence in bringing about the romantic revival as Percy's 
Reliques. Sir Walter Scott, in particular, is strongly indebted 
to it. "The first time I could scrape a few shillings together," 
says he, "I bought myself a copy of these beloved volumes; nor 
do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently or with half 
the enthusiasm." 

THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771) 

His Life. — Thomas Gray, the author of the "Elegy Written in a Country 

Churchyard," the best known poem in our literature, was born in London 
in 1716; his father, like Milton's, was a scrivener. Gray's education was 
very largely directed by his mother, to whom he was deeply attached. After 
leaving Eton, he went to Peterhouse, the oldest of the colleges of Cambridge 
University. At Cambridge Gray was a devoted student of the classics, 
noted for his fastidious tastes and retiring disposition. Soon after taking 
his degree he went with Horace Walpole, whom he had met at Eton, on a 
walking tour through France and Italy, particularly through the moun- 
tains, the wild scenery of the Alps strongly appealing to Gray. Returning 
to Cambridge after three years, Gray settled down as a fellow, and absorbed 
in the study of the classics, science, and antiquities, spent the rest of his 
life at the University. He varied the monotony of the scholar's existence 
with occasional visits to friends, to the British Museum, and to Stoke 
Pogis, the home of his mother and sister. Three years before his death he 
was appointed Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, but did not 
lecture. 

An anecdote of Gray's life at Cambridge is still told there as illustrating 
his sensitive and shy nature and accounting for his removal from Peter- 
house to Pembroke College where he died. Gray, it seems, was very much 
afraid of fire, and had provided a projecting iron railing in front of his third 
story window to which he might attach a rope and descend. Some young 
men on the same floor raised an alarm of fire one night. The poet (he was 
a well-known man of letters at the time) hastily attached his rope ladder 
and descended; not, however, to the ground, but into a water barrel which 
his mischievous associates had prepared for quenching him — a not very 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 285 



delicate allusion, perhaps, to poetic fire. He indignantly migrated across 
the street to Pembroke College, and there spent the rest of his days. Gray 
died in 1771 and was buried in the same tomb with his mother just back of 
the church in the lovely little churchyard of Stoke Pogis, forever famous as 
the scene of the "Elegy." 



His Work and Characteristics.— A slender little volume con- 
tains all the poems of Thomas Gray, but there are few volumes of 




STOKE POGIS CHURCHYARD, THE SCENE OF GRAY'S "ELEGY" 



eighteenth century verse which contain so much of high quality. 
"Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" (1742), "Elegy 
Written in a Country Churchyard" (1750), "The Progress of 
Poesy" and "The Bard" (1757), "The Descent of Odin," and 
"The Fatal Sisters" (1761) — these are the principal poems of 
Gray. Besides this little volume of poems he left a number of 
Letters and a Journal which prove him a master of descriptive 
prose. His Letters, indeed, are among the most readable from 
our literary men. 



286 



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Gray's poetry shows a steady growth of his mind and art from 
the classic limitations of the early eighteenth century into the 
greater freedom of the new order. The subject matter of his 
early poems is strictly English and the form more or less conven- 
tional; in the later poems he deals with Welsh and Norse subjects 
and in so doing becomes more original and romantic. The earlier 
poems are imbued with that deep melancholy from which Gray 
suffered all his life; they are, of course, a part of the "literature 
of melancholy" that makes somber much of the poetry of the 
century. 

The tone of the "Elegy" is that of Milton's "II Penseroso" 
intensified by the greater distance from Elizabethan joyousness 
and by the romantic fondness of the time for churchyard musings. 
Stoke Pogis is not far from Horton, the scene of "II Penseroso" 
and one of the loveliest landscapes in England. From the church- 
yard one may see the towers of Windsor Castle and even the chapel 
of Eton. The old yew-tree of the "Elegy" is still pointed out to 
the thousands who yearly visit the hallowed spot. Nearby is 
the stone monument erected by the poet's admirers and inscribed 
with stanzas from the immortal poem. His own tomb next to 
the church, on which is a feeling epitaph by the poet to his mother, 
is simple enough. No other poem in the language has so appealed 
to the heart of high and low or been more often quoted than this 
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"; and certainly in har- 
mony of form and sentiment as well as in the finish of the verse 
it would be hard to find a poem that surpasses it. Every student 
should memorize the entire poem. 

Next to the "Elegy" the most noted poem of Gray is "The 
Bard." In this poem an old Celtic bard, the last of his inspired 
line, seated upon an inaccessible rock, is represented as denounc- 
ing the victorious English King Edward, who with his army is 
entering Wales through the defile. The venerable bard above him 
charges the king with the death of Celtic poets taken prisoners. 
After prophesying the immortality of poetic genius in spite of 
the tyrant's power, this old bard then plunges headlong into the 
river below, The material of this poem and the method of treat- 



THE MIDDLE AND -LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 287 



ment are essentially romantic. The odes of Gray are called "Pin- 
daric Odes," because they are in the form employed by the Greek 
poet Pindar. ' This difficult poetic form Gray used with noteworthy 
success. "The Bard" is a spirited poem ; from the first impassioned 
lines — 

Ruin seize thee, ruthless King! 
Confusion on thy banners wait, 
Tho' fann'd by Conquest's crimson wing, 
They mock the air with idle state — 

to the very last, the indignation of the prophetic bard, denounc- 
ing the conqueror, fiercely burns. 

Gray, like Goldsmith, was too much under the domination of 
the classic spell to abandon rhyme for blank verse, and so he be- 
longs in part to the old order, but not so much as Goldsmith, 
who clung to the heroic couplet modified. Gray, pioneer roman- 
ticist though he is in his return to nature and his delight in Welsh 
and Norse themes, would doubtless have voiced the new move- 
ment more distinctly if he had fearlessly let himself go, — if, as 
Matthew Arnold suggests, he had "spoken out." 

WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800) 

His Life. — Akin to Gray in shyness and melancholy and attached to the 
romantic movement on its nature and humanitarian sides, William Cowper 
is a more significant figure in our literature than his older contemporary, 
Cowper was born in Hertfordshire in 1731, the son of a clergyman. His 
mother died when he was six years old, and his sensitive nature was thus 
early exposed to the coldness or disdain of his little world. Bullied beyond 
endurance by a big schoolfellow in the local school, Cowper was sent to 
Westminster School, London, where he remained for some years, leaving 
it with a confirmed horror of the brutality of public school manners which 
he later expressed in one of his poems. It was decided that he should study 
law and he was accordingly put to reading in an attorney's office; but law 
was not to his taste, though he was actually admitted to practice in 1754. 
The next few years he wrote light essays for the magazines, went into 
society, and fell in love with a pretty cousin whom, but for her father's 
opposition, he would have married. An appointment as clerk of the journals 
of the House of Lords was now secured for Cowper, but he so greatly dreaded 
the simple ordeal of qualifying that he tried to commit suicide. This was 



288 



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the first of those attacks of morbid depression which occurred at intervals 
throughout his life. Apparently cured by eighteen-months of confinement 
in a madhouse, he went to Huntingdon for greater quiet and recreation. 
His temporary insanity had left him with a profound religious melancholy. 

At Huntingdon he met a clergyman named Unwin. Mr. and Mrs. Unwin 
took so much interest in Cowper and he was so delighted with their beauti- 
ful home life and religious spirit that he became as a member of the family 
and was the rest of his life associated with the Unwins. "Mrs. Unwin has 
almost a maternal affection for me, and I have something very like a filial 
one for her, and her son and I are brothers," wrote Cowper in one of his 
delightful letters describing the daily life of that happy family. At Olney, 
whither Mrs. Unwin had moved after her husband's death, Cowper wrote 
the famous Olney Hymns, and here he composed some of his best poetry. 
Lady Austen, an accomplished and vivacious friend of the family, related 
to the poet the legend of John Gilpin, from which the humorous ballad 
sprang. Peals of laughter were heard in Cowper's room that night, and the 
poet explained next morning that he had been writing some verses. He 
then proceeded to read "John Gilpin" at the breakfast table. When he asked 
Lady Austen one day for a subject on which he might write a long blank- 
verse poem, she replied, looking down at the sofa on which they were sitting, 
"Take the sofa." This was the occasion of The Task, his longest work, 
beginning, "I sing the Sofa." 

In such pleasant companionship and amid peaceful country scenes Cowper 
spent his life. Fits of depression seized him from time to time, deepening 
into a mild form of insanity as the years wore on. At last darkness closed 
in upon his sensitive, morbid soul, lighted up now and then by fitful gleams 
of sanity, during which he struck off some exquisite poem; then deeper 
darkness, and then the end. He died the last year of the eighteenth century, 
when the old order had already fully yielded to the new. 

His Work and Characteristics. — Cowper wrote a large amount 
of poetry on a variety of subjects and in varied forms. His first 
volume, published in 1782, contains such long poems as "Table 
Talk" and "Conversation," more or less in the conventional classic 
manner, though the rhyming couplets are less artificial than the 
old regulation verse, revealing now and then a genial humor. 
Cowper's first elaborate poem, a masterpiece of prolonged descrip- 
tion, The Task, appeared in 1785 and made him famous. It is 
in blank verse, contains many striking passages of personal and 
nature description, quotable lines, and in general impresses one 
by its naturalness. From a mock-heroic discussion of the gradual 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 289 



development of rude seats into the highly civilized sofa (the 
theme suggested as a "task" by Lady Austen) the poet passes to 
descriptions of country scenes, which for simplicity and charm 
remind us of passages in Wordsworth. The oft-quoted line- 
God made the country, and man made the town— 

occurs in this poem. 

"The Diverting History of John Gilpin" (1782) is Cowper's 
most humorous production, a favorite with young and old, the 
one poem in which the usually serious poet let himself go. Every 
reader of it wishes that he had done so many times. Cowper's 
tenderest utterance, and one of the greatest tributes in literature 
to maternal love, is the poem, "On the Receipt of my Mother's 
Picture," which came straight from the heart of a man of delicate 
sensibility whose mother died when he was a little child. "The 
Castaway" was written a year before Cowper's death, and in 
the fate of the lost sailor the poet forecasts his own: 

No voice divine the storm allayed, 

No light propitious shone, 
When, snatched from all effectual aid, 

We perished, each alone: 
But I beneath a rougher sea, 
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he. 

Besides these poems, descriptive and narrative, Cowper wrote 
some of the great hymns of our language: "Oh, for a closer walk 
with God," "God moves in a mysterious way," "There is a foun- 
tain filled with blood," "Hark, my Soul ! it is the Lord." Further- 
more he translated the Iliad into blank verse, a faithful and poet- 
ically meritorious version though never widely popular, possibly 
because his generation had been brought up on Pope's jingling 
translation. Finally, Cowper's Letters form a valuable and charm- 
ing record of his domestic life. His leisure, his congenial surround- 
ings, his fondness for the society of sympathetic women, and his 
playful humor, all contributed to make him the most delightful 



290 



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of eighteenth century letter-writers; and those who would know 
Cowper intimately should read the Letters. 

Cowper belongs to the new school of nature poets, whose chief 
glory in the next century is William Wordsworth; his simple 
naturalness allies him with Wordsworth; the deep meditative 
sense and the mystic feeling for nature of his great successor he 
had not. What are the distinguishing romantic characteristics 
of Cowper's poetry? First of all, his delight in quiet rural nature; 
second, his social and political liberalism — opposition to oppression 
of every kind, slavery, war, injustice; third, a democratic spirit, 
which makes him a close kinsman of his own northern contempo- 
rary, Robert Burns. 

ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796) 

His Life. — The national poet of Scotland and the most widely read and 
loved of song makers, Robert Burns, whom we familiarly call "Bobbie," 
was born in a little clay cottage at Alloway, two miles from the city of 
Ayr, in 1759. His father, who built the cottage, was William Burns, a 
devout farmer, to whose piety and sterling character his famous son paid 
tribute in "The Cotter's Saturday Night." The boy had two and a half 
years of schooling, and at fifteen he became the chief helper of his father 
on the farm. During these years the elder Burns moved about from farm to 
farm, barely making a living, though he was an industrious and upright 
man. Meanwhile, Robert read and studied at home and at the plow, en- 
couraged thereto by his father who was not without general culture. The 
father died in 1784, and Robert with his brother Gilbert took charge of a 
farm at Mossgiel in the hope of making an adequate support for the family. 
Here was written some of his best verse. Farming at Mossgiel was not a 
success and Burns, discouraged and restless, thought of going to Jamaica, 
when, acting on the advice of friends, he collected and published (1786) 
the first edition of his poems. The volume was cordially, even enthusiasti- 
cally, received and an invitation to visit Edinburgh followed. 

The visit to Edinburgh in the early part of the next year marks the crisis 
of Burns's life. In that city of social and literary culture he was received 
with flattering attention, wined and dined as the hero of the hour, and won- 
dered at for his brilliant gift of conversation and his charm of manner. The 
peasant poet bore himself well in that critical circle, making friends and 
winning golden opinions. A second edition of his poems, with additions, 
was issued this same year, 1787, and because of his well-established reputa- 
tion sold rapidly, bringing the author five hundred pounds, a big sum for 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 291 




ROBERT BURNS 



the needy poet. Burns returned to Mossgiel, but the poor prospect there 
and the discontent with his provincial lot which had naturally followed 
his splendid ovation among the great, led him to look for more lucrative 
and more congenial employment. He traveled about Scotland a while, 
visited Edinburgh again, where his reception was less hearty than before, 
and then settled on a farm near Ellisland, six miles from Dumfries. He 
had meanwhile married Jean Armour. 

Though somewhat embittered by disappointment and weakened morally 
and physically by the several forms of dissipation from which he was never 
very long free, Burns nevertheless did some excellent poetic work at Ellis 
land— notably "Tarn O'Shanter" — and might possibly have settled down to 
a steadier life had not his friends, through a mistaken kindness, secured 
his appointment as gauger and exciseman for the district. This office kept 
him much on the road and seriously tried his convivial nature. The farm 
was neglected, and finally in 1791 Burns moved with his family to Dumfries, 
from which he thought he might more satisfactorily carry on the gauger- 
ship. The years of intemperance were telling on his powerful frame; his 
health began to give way in 1795, and the next year Robert Burns, most 



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gifted of Scottish singers, died at the age of thirty-seven. He lies in the 
old churchyard at Dumfries, and over his bones his countrymen later erected 
a great mausoleum, more showy no doubt than his own simple taste would 
approve. At his birthplace and elsewhere noble memorials testify to the 

love of the Scotch people for his songs. 

His Personality. — Burns was a man of masterful passions, of 
seemingly uncontrollable emotions, and he had the buoyancy of 
a big boy; out of these grew his failings. He had the defects of 
his temperament to a marked degree, and these defects have been 
sufficiently catalogued without the need, even if space permitted, 
of repeating them here. His inconstancy, his excesses, his con- 
vivial temper and weak will — all these illustrate in a pitiful way 
his own words, "to step aside is human," and make his career "a 
life of fragments." One is constrained to quote his own lines as 
the fittest comment: 

The poor inhabitant below 

Was quick to learn, and wise to know, 

And keenly felt the friendly glow, 

And softer flame, 
But thoughtless follies laid him low, 

And stained his name! 

But without attempting to hide his faults or to apologize for 
them, we must not forget the insidiousness of his temptations, 
the low moral standards of his neighborhood, the general wilful- 
ness of genius, and the grind of poverty. His kindness of heart, 
his broad and deep humanity, his genial humor, his sincerity, 
his unfailing patriotism, and above all else, his glorious gift of 
song, are virtues so great that condemnation is all but lost in a 
feeling of indulgent compassion. , 

Works and Literary Characteristics. — Burns's genius is essen- 
tially lyric, manifesting itself most truly in love songs, personal 
tributes, patriotic outbursts, and the like, all direct from the 
heart and very concrete. He wrote few long poems: the two com- 
paratively long productions which most fitly represent him are 
"The Cotter's Saturday Night," in the Spenserian stanza, a real- 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 293 



istic picture of a godly Scotch cottage-home such as he knew in 
childhood, and "Tarn O'Shanter," a rollicking and boisterous tale 
of a furious ride past Alloway Kirk. "Tarn O'Shanter" is a thor- 
oughly characteristic poem, Burns's favorite, in which the high 
spirits, the outbreaking mirthful humor, of the poet are actually 
felt by the reader. Among the shorter poems the following are 




BIRTHPLACE OF BURNS 
Interior and Exterior Views 

particularly expressive of Burns's deeper interests — his sympathy? 
love of woman, love of Scotland, regard for individual worth: 
"To a Mouse," "To a Mountain Daisy," "Highland Mary," "To 
Mary in Heaven," "A Red, Red Rose," "I Love My Jean," "Flow 
Gently, sweet Afton," "Scots Wha Hae wi' Wallace Bled," "Bon- 
nie Doon," "John Anderson," "A Man's a Man for a ? That." 
As a sort of apology for his own life, the "Address to the Unco' 
Guid" should be carefully read. 



m 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



So fresh and original is Burns's poetry after the long years of 
hothouse versifying in the eighteenth century, so thoroughly 
alive are these lyrics, that we ask ourselves where Burns got his 
impulse. Was he a reader of old ballads, as was Scott? He doubt- 
less read all he could get hold of, but he certainly makes little use 
of the ballad-form in his own verse. In his childhood he heard 
from old women of the neighborhood numbers of old Scotch 
songs and legends, and when he was older he eagerly read collec- 
tions of these songs made by Allan Ramsay and others. Of 
course he read the English poets; his "Cotter's Saturday Night" 
shows indebtedness to Gray and Goldsmith; but his real inspira- 
tion came from the Scotch folk-songs in which from his childhood 
his mind was steeped. To Fergusson and Allan Ramsay, popular 
poets of the country, he seems to owe most. 

It is the chief glory of Burns, however, that he wrote of men 
and women, animals, flowers, streams, as he saw them, not as 
books or othep men saw them. He plowed up a nest of field mice 
and forthwith put them with human sympathy into his verse, 
making at the end a personal application; and so with the daisy: 
he and the mice and the daisy were having a hard time of it 
together in this unfeeling world — innocence and beauty and poverty 
meant suffering. It took mice a long time to get into poetry in 
the human way. Here was something new, indeed. Burns and 
Highland Mary kneel beside the stream, dip their hands in together 
and plight eternal vows; death snatches away full soon this High- 
land girl: then the lover writes a pathetic lyric in which that 
parting scene is vividly before us. He stands on the field of Ban- 
nockburn nearly five hundred years after the battle, images the 
situation, and pours forth that thrilling martial lyric, "Scots Wha ' 
Hae wi' Walkce Bled." And so we might go on to show how ani- 
mated and direct the poetry of Burns is, because he gets the thing 
he is writing about into his emotions and speaks it out hot from 
his heart. 

The obvious characteristics, then, of Burns as a poet are: 
First, he is concerned with things Scotch. He was himself provin- 
cial and his poetry is provincial in the best sense: human nature 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 295 



being fundamentally the same everywhere, he seized upon the 
universal in the provincial and made it interesting to you and to 
me, just as Shakespeare did. Great literature is simply an illumi- 
nation of the usual and the commonplace. Burns's intense patri- 
otism flames through his verse. Second, he generally writes out 
of experience, and consequently his illustrations are so homely, 
so real, that we are convinced of the poet's truthfulness. This 
is Burns's sincerity about which Carlyle talks so much. Third, 
Burns is always on the side of the lowly and oppressed, whether 
man or beast, and hence he is the poet of democracy. He stands 
for the worth of the individual man and for human brotherhood: 

Then let us pray that coine it may 

(As come it will for a' that) 
That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth 
Shall bear the gree an' a' that! 
For a' that an' a' that, 
It's comin' yet for a' that, 
That man to man the world o'er 
Shall brithers be for a' that. 

Crabbe, the Realist (1754-1832).— Related to Cowper, Burns, 
and Wordsworth by the naturalness of his verse depicting rustic 
life, George Crabbe is the most baldly realistic of the earlier 
romantic nature poets. Born in Suffolk, befriended by Burke, 
through whose influence he was given a chaplaincy by the Duke 
of Rutland, Crabbe spent his long life as a country clergyman 
devoted to literature. He saw much of the ' 'seamy side of life" 
in his parish, portraying the people and their surroundings with 
minute fidelity. The poem which made his reputation is The 
Village, written in rhyming couplets and published in 1783. 
Crabbe was without the romantic enthusiasm which animates 
the poetry of Goldsmith and Burns and gives a tinge of idealism 
to their pictures of common folk. He dwells on the unlovely 
lot of the poverty-stricken people about him, — the dreary village 
street and its ragged denizens, the workingmen's lodgings, the 
unrelieved monotony and wretchedness of dwellers in slums and 



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workhouses. These excursions into sordid conditions are varied 
here and there with picturesque descriptions of natural scenery. 
Crabbe had a sense for the "richness of common things" which 
we shall find later in Jane Aasten, Wordsworth, Dickens, and 
Charles Kingsley, allying himself unconsciously with the social 
side, of Romanticism. His later works are The Borough, Tales in 
Verse, and Tales of the Hall. 

Blake, the Mystic (1757-1827).— Quite different from Crabbe 
is the visionary William Blake. He was an engraver by trade, 
and loved to haunt the gloomy recesses of Westminster Abbey 
and other London churches, where he would sketch the monuments. 
Blake's father, a poor London hosier, was a follower of Swedenborg, 
the religious mystic, and the son possessed in a marked degree 
some of the characteristics of the Swedenborgians. He was 
startled by visions in his childhood and youth: once when four 
years old he screamed with fright because, as he said, he saw God 
at a window; at another time he saw a tree full of angels, and 
later on he saw old poets, prophets and heavenly forms; he asserted 
that he saw the soul of his brother Robert, who had just died, 
vanishing through the ceiling and clapping its hands. The 
curious engravings which adorn his own poems, as well as his 
copies of Young's Night Thoughts, Blair's Grave, and Job, were 
lovingly wrought out by Biake. He was poor and he was obscure, 
and yet he wrought his mystic fancies into pictures with unfailing 
cheerfulness and wrote a number of poems of exquisite lyric quality 
about animals, children, roses, and trees. Part madman and part 
mystic (the two are kin), as critics usually classify him, Blake 
was a genuine lyric poet, recalling the Elizabethan by his passion- 
ate imagination and metrical forms. He is a kindred spirit of 
Wordsworth's in his love of simple things, while his vague raptures 
suggest Shelley. 

The two series of poems most worthy of mention here are 
Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794). These 
lyrics were first engraved on copper "with a decorative margin 
of arabesque design," and printed from the plate on tinted paper, 
the lettering being in red. The various pictures used by Blake for 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 297 

adorning his poetry are quite incomprehensible to the unenlight- 
ened reader. The song beginning, "Piping down the Valleys 
Wild," and that beginning, "Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright," are 
excellent examples of Blake's verse. A recent writer calls his 
poetry "a peal of fairy bells from a lonely tower in a strange 
land." He is a significant figure in the romantic movement. 
Some insist, indeed, that he is the first genuine romantic poet. 

We have now traced the beginnings of the romantic movement 
from the mid-eighteenth century to the very threshold of the 
nineteenth. In 1798 a little volume of poems by Wordsworth 
and Coleridge appeared, called Lyrical Ballads, and with this 
work a new era in English poetry may be said to have begun. 
We have noted the several leading characteristics of the newer 
poetry — the return to nature, sympathy for man, reversion to 
the Elizabethans, and interest in the Middle Ages. We have 
doubtless observed the tendencies to melancholy in the early 
romanticists, the morbidness in some, the eccentricities and irregu- 
larities in others, and finally, the vague, mystic imagination of 
Blake. All these are in a sense gropings towards the full-orbed 
splendor of the romantic movement in the new century. 



298 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 
THE PERIOD IN OUTLINE (1740-1798) 



LITERATURE 

I. RISE OF THE NOVEL 

Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe 
(1719) and other stories 

Samuel Richardson: Pamela (1740), 
first regular novel; Clarissa 
Harlowe 

Henry Fielding: Tom Jones, 

Amelia 
Smollett and Sterne 

II. JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE 

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): Eng- 
lish Dictionary (1755), Ram- 
bler, Lives of Poets 

Boswell's Life of Johnson 

Oliver Goldsmith: Traveler, De- 
serted Village, Vicar of Wake- 
field (1766), Plays 

Edmund Burke: Conciliation with 
America (1775) 

Edward Gibbon: Decline and Fall 
of the Roman Empire (1788) 

III. BEGINNINGS OF ROMAN- 

TICISM 

The Scotch Poets: Thomson (Sea- 
sons, 1730), Beattie, Ramsay 
Percy's Reliques (Ballads), 1765 
Thomas Gray: Elegy, Odes 
William Cowper (1731-1800): The 
Task, John Gilpin, Hymns, 
Letters 

Robert Bums (1759-1796): Cot- 
ter's Saturday Night, Tarn 
O'Shanter, Lyrics 

William Blake: Songs of Innocence, 
Songs of Experience 



HISTORY 
Reign of George III, 1760-1820 



India becomes a part of British 
Empire, 1757 



Wolfe captures Quebec, 1759 



Watt invents the steam engine, 
1765 



Howard visits English prisons, 1774 



Declaration of American Inde- 
pendence, 1776 



Impeachment of Hastings, 1786 



French Revolution begins, 1789 



CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS : — The Passing of Classicism; Birth of the 
Modern Novel ; Beginnings of Romanticism ; Political and Industrial Ex- 
pansion. 



THE MIDDLE AND LATER EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 299 



SOME USEFUL BOOKS 

Historical. — Seeley's The Expansion of England, Macaulay's essays on 
Clive-and Hastings, Thackeray's The Four Georges, Hale's Men and Man- 
ners of the Eighteenth Century. 

Literary. — Seccombe's The Age of Johnson (Macmillan), Williams's Eng- 
lish Letters and Letter-Writers of the Eighteenth Century, Boswell's Life 
of Johnson (Everyman's Library), Lives of writers in English Men of Letters 
Series, Dawson's Makers of Modem English Prose (Revell). 

The Novel. — Cross's The Development of the English Novel (Macmillan), 
Raleigh's The English Novel (Scribners), Burton's Masters of the English 
Novel (Holt), Dawson's Makers of English Prose Fiction (Revell). 

Romanticism. — Phelps's Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement 
(Ginn), Beers's English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century (Holt). 

Works of the principal writers of this period are easily accessible in 
annotated editions and in "Everyman's Library" (Dutton). 



CHAPTER TEN 
THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 
1798-1837 

From the Publication of the "Lyrical Ballads 9 ' to the Accession 

of Victoria 



Revolution and Reform.— The tremendous political and social 
upheaval known as the French Revolution (1789), shook all west- 
ern Europe; indeed, the whole civilized world felt directly or indi- 
rectly the turmoil which followed. After centuries of oppression 
the old order was at last overthrown in a reign of terror and 
frenzy. The younger leaders of political thought in England at first 
looked on hopefully when the French Republic was established, 
with its magic watchwords of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"; but 
soon the conservative English mind was shocked by the violence, 
the blood and fury, of the Revolution across the English Channel. 
Then came the Napoleonic wars and England was drawn into 
the conflict to save herself from threatened invasion. The battle 
of Waterloo (1815) put an end to the designs of Napoleon, and 
England and the rest of Europe settled down to work in earnest 
at the problems of constitutional government. The younger 
literary men in England, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, in 
like manner lost their earlier faith in the regenerating power 
of the French Revolution and turned from the question of social 
and political reform to communion with nature, to meditation, 
or to dreaming. Others, such as Byron and Shelley, of more 
revolutionary temperaments, lashed themselves into fury against 
society or soared high above the earth. The French Revo- 
lution had, notwithstanding this spirit of reaction, exercised a 

[300] 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



301 



powerful influence upon the poets, and is to be accounted a sig- 
nificant force in the development of Romanticism. 

Meanwhile, be it remembered, another sort of Revolution had 
taken place across the sea in America, the result in part of the 
spread of that same passion for liberty which was so violently 
stirring the peoples of western Europe. The Frenchman Rous- 
seau had years before preached with effect the gospel of Individual- 
ism, and the half-fanatic Thomas Paine later had a wide hearing 
in England and America through his Rights of Man, written in 
the interest of popular liberty. Another book which helped to 
bring about a different sort of revolution — an economic one — was 
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), in which it is argued 
that labor is the real source of national wealth. Out of these 
various revolutionary conditions — political, social, economic — ■ 
came definite reforms in England. The African slave trade was 
abolished in 1807; political discrimination against Catholics was 
done away with in 1829; the Reform Bill conferring suffrage 
upon the great middle class was passed in 1832; and the next 
year the slaves in English colonial possessions were set free. Kin- 
dred reforms were soon to follow — improvement of laws in regard 
to child labor, debtors' prisons, workhouses, hospitals, and the 
like, — the beginnings of that social betterment which the Victorian 
age was a little later to carry on more systematically. 

A Great Creative Age.— When we turn to literature, we find 
an outburst of creative energy in the first third of the nineteenth 
century second only to that of the Elizabethan Age. Another 
Renaissance had come, and the tide was running strong and high. 
In the new poetry and prose the energizing forces already noted 
in later eighteenth century literature are working steadily. Back 
of them is the throb of a prosperous, confident national life. The 
temper of the time is idealistic. Not since the days of Elizabeth 
had there been such buoyancy, such dreaming about perfection, 
such assurance of the fulfilment of visions. That complex and 
elusive thing called Romanticism — in essence a restoration of 
emotion to its proper place in literature — shows two fairly well- 
defined tendencies: the one intensely realistic, a reflection of 



302 



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common life in poetry and prose fiction ; the other highly imagina- 
tive, an excursion into the mystic world of dreams, fantastic and 
weird. Wordsworth and Coleridge respectively represent these 
two tendencies. In such a period as this poetry is the natural 
form of expression, even as it was in the days of Shakespeare. 
Prose was the proper medium in the practical eighteenth century 
when imagination and emotion were peacefully sleeping. But 
only poetry could voice such aspirations as the youthful enthusi- 
asts of this era of revolution had. Looking back in after years 
upon that golden time, Wordsworth exclaimed — 

Bliss was it in that Dawn to be alive, 
But to be young was very heaven! 

THE GREATER ROMANTIC POETS 

The greater poets of Romanticism are Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats. The geographical centers of inspira- 
tion were the English Lake District, the Scottish lowlands about 
the river Tweed, and Italy. Wordsworth and Coleridge were 
friends and for a time neighbors, forming with Southey the trio 
sometimes called the "Lake Poets." Scott was the supreme 
interpreter of Scotch romantic legend; Byron and Shelley spent 
most of their lives in Italy, and, though different in character, 
resemble each other in their revolutionary attitude toward society. 
Keats, who died in Rome, spent most of his brief life in and around 
London, though his poetry has an antique flavor, remote in sub- 
ject matter from local and contemporary issues. As Scott is 
confessedly greater as novelist than as poet, it seems better to 
consider him a little later under the novelists. Of all these poets 
Wordsworth is preeminent for his almost religious dedication to 
his art. 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) 

His Life. — The life of William Wordsworth was outwardly uneventful, 
and may well be studied in his poetry, for which a walking tour through 
the English Lake District is unquestionably the best preparation. There 
is probably no other English poet, not even Scott, whose verse is mrop 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



303 




WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 



inseparably connected with his native region. Wordsworth was born at 
Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the northwest corner of the Lake District, 
in 1770, son of an attorney-at-law. His father and mother died in his early 
boyhood and his education was directed by his uncles. He attended the 
Hawkshead Grammar School, and in 1787 entered King's College, Cam- 
bridge, from which he received his B. A. in 1791. Both at Hawkshead, a 
picturesque little village on Esthwaite Water, and at Cambridge, Words- 
worth was a serious though not enthusiastic student, his passion for nature 
leading him to a closer communion with mountain, glen, tree, and flower, 
than with books. He was a famous climber, walker, skater, and rower. 
The quiet beauty of the old university town on the Cam, with its elms and 
willows and grassy banks, strongly appealed to his nature-loving sense. 

During the next year or two Wordsworth visited Paris, which was in the 
throes of Revolution, and then Orleans. Here he met a well-known Repub- 
lican general from whom he caught an ardor for the revolutionary cause. 
For a while, indeed, he even thought of joining the revolutionists. Just at 
this time he was called home, as England was about to take up arms 
against France. This brief stay had, however, profoundly affected him, 
though he lost faith in the sincerity of the revolutionists when the move- 



304 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



ment became a prolonged reign of terror. In 1795 Wordsworth settled 
down with his sister Dorothy in a cottage in Dorsetshire, a bequest from a 
friend and a small legacy from his father's estate enabling him to live 
modestly and give his whole thought to poetry. Soon after this he met 
Coleridge, with whom a lasting friendship was formed. In order to be 
near Coleridge, he and Dorothy moved in 1797 to Alfoxden. The next 
year, 1798, the two friends published a slender volume, Lyrical Ballads, 




DOVE COTTAGE 
The home, at different times, of Wordsworth and De Quincey 



containing the famous poems "The Ancient Mariner" and "Tintern Ab- 
bey." After spending a winter in Germany, Wordsworth and his sister 
moved to Grasmere in the English Lake District. 

When Wordsworth returned to the Lakes in 1799 he was not quite thirty, 
and in this charming region he spent the rest of his long life. Dove Cot- 
tage, overlooking Grasmere Lake and to-day a favorite shrine of literary 
pilgrims, was for some years the home of the Wordsworths— a little, low- 
ceilinged house with tiny rooms, at the foot of a steep hill, where "plain 
living and high thinking" were to be seen at their best. In 1802 Wordsworth 
married his cousin, Mary Hutchinson, who, with his sister Dorothy, was the 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



305 



inspirer of some of his best lyric verse. Never was a poet attended by more 
devoted and appreciative women. In 1813, after five years spent at Allan 
Bank near by, the family moved to Rydal Mount, between Grasmere and 
Ambleside, and there Wordsworth lived for the next thirty-seven years 
an idyllic life. In 1812 he was appointed distributor of stamps for West- 
moreland, a position which he held for thirty years, at the end of which 
time he was pensioned by the government. Finally, in 1843, on the death of 
his friend Southey, at Keswick, Wordsworth was made Poet Laureate of 
England. His poetry brought him little or no income, but fortunately his 
small legacies, his salary as stamp-distributor, and his pension, enabled 
him to live comfortably and write poetry. He died in 1850 and was buried 
in Grasmere churchyard 1 by the side of Dorothy. 

His Personality. — Wordsworth composed his verse out of doors 
as he walked, speaking out the lines, keeping the time or beats 
by nodding his head or striking one hand into the other. His 
most characteristic portrait shows his head slightly bent forward 
as if he were in deep meditation or looking on the ground. He 
was a profoundly earnest, sedate, and religious man, an integral 
part of the interesting region in which he spent his life, and of 
which his own poetry is an illuminated guidebook. His person- 
ality has something of the high seriousness of Milton's, though 
it has less austerity, for Wordsworth had more human tenderness. 
He lacked a sense of humor, however; this will account for the 
egotism in some of his utterances which is both amusing and 
exasperating. Criticism did not annoy him; indeed, he did not 
read it; he read few books of any kind. Calmness, steadiness, 
consecration, self-control, reverence, are some of the moral and 
spiritual qualities that come to mind in reading the works of a 
man who could early in life write these solemn words about him- 
self: 

I made no vows, but vows 
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me 
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, 
A dedicated Spirit. 

His Works. — The little volume of poems called Lyrical Ballads, 
published in 1798, was, as already indicated, something quite 
new in English poetry, and may be regarded as Romanticism's 

1 See page 353. 



306 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



declaration of independence. Wordsworth sought to prove that 
commonplace things and people may be invested with poetic 
interest, while Coleridge demonstrated in the same volume that 
the supernatural may be realistically treated. Besides a few 
simple poems of narrative and descriptive character, such as 
"Margaret," "Simon Lee," "Peter Bell," "The Idiot Boy," and 
"The Old Cumberland Beggar," the volume contained that master- 
piece of serene and elevated reflection, "Lines Composed a Few 
Miles Above Tintern Abbey": these were all by Wordsworth. 
Coleridge's ever memorable contribution was "The Rime of the 
Ancient Mariner." The critics in general treated this little epoch- 
marking volume with more or less contempt, either ignoring or 
ridiculing the two great poems which later brought such glory 
to their respective authors. A few, endowed with more spiritual 
discernment, saw in them a new order of genius. 

To attempt an exhaustive classification of Wordsworth's poetry 
is impossible here; a few representative poems under several 
general heads may be mentioned. Autobiographical and Reflect- 
ive: The Prelude and The Excursion, together the longest of his 
poems, forming a part of a great work called The Recluse, pro- 
jected but never completed. Narrative and Pastoral: "Michael," 
the pathetic story of an old Cumberland shepherd, one of the 
most powerful of his poems for its simplicity, restraint, and deep 
human quality; "White Doe of Rylstone." Classical Themes: 
"Laodamia," "Dion." Odes and Sonnets: "Ode on Intimations 
of Immortality," a supreme lyric utterance; "Ode to Duty," a 
moral tonic; and the great sonnets, "The World is Too Much with 
Us," "To Milton," "Toussaint L'Ouverture," "Westminster 
Bridge," "To B. R. Haydon," "It is a Beauteous Evening," 
"Afterthought." These sonnets are among the greatest in all 
literature; no poet since Milton has put such solemn music and 
meaning into this fourteen-line form. Short Ballads and Lyrics: 
"We are Seven," "Lucy Gray," "To the Cuckoo," "My Heart 
Leaps Up," "At the Grave of Burns," "The Solitary Reaper," 
the three "Yarrows," "She was a Phantom of Delight," "I 
Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," "To a Skylark." To this brief 



THE TRIUMPH OF ."ROMANTICISM 



307 



enumeration should be added the less commonly known and read 
"Character of the Happy Warrior/' one of iie most bracing of 
Wordsworth's poems on duty. 

Source and Inspiration of His Poetry. — Out of his close fellow- 
ship with nature grew most of Wordsworth's verse. His relation 
to nature is entirely intimate and personal — a relation not hitherto 
found in literary history. With him, therefore, a new era of nature- 
feeling begins, and succeeding poets and novelists have, whether 
they always recognized it or not, owed him an immense debt. 
In Wordsworth's work there are. when we try to analyze it, 
found to be two dominating ideas: first, the worth and dignity of 
man as man, out of which spring his poems on common life, 
revealing his interest in rustics, children, idiots, and beggars, as 
fit subjects for imaginative treatment; and, second, the power of 
nature to comfort, teach, and elevate man through his communion 
with her, — a communion which may vary all the way from simple 
outward delight in nature to an inward, mystical relation between 
man and nature. 

This sense of intimacy with nature, based on an almost inspired 
insight into her hidden meaning, finds expression in "Tintern 
Abbey," an earlier poem, the serene and blessed tone of which, 
when read aloud, calms and elevates the spirit: 

For I have learned 
To look on mature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 
The still, sad music of humanity, 
Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things. 



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ENGLISH LITERATURE 



In this poem and in the great "Ode on Intimations of Immor- 
tality" are to be found the highest reaches of Wordsworth's genius. 
The Immortality ode begins with a tone of lament for the loss of 
vision and glory of childhood, that inborn sense of immortality 
so darkly obscured by the "philosophic years" of manhood; 
gradually the conviction grows that something of that "primal 
sympathy" and clear intention still remain, — ■ 

To perish never, 
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, 

Nor man nor boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy! 

The poem ends in a burst of gratitude for the abiding faith 
"that looks through death," and for the power to recognize the 
significance of common things: 

Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, 
To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

The real emphasis in the poem is, of course, not on the mystic 
doctrine of reminiscence, or preexistence, but on the intuitive 
assurance of immortality in the soul of man. This lofty and 
musical poem should be committed to memory by every young 
student who would make his mind a "mansion for all lovely forms." 

His Theory of Poetry. — Wordsworth, unlike most poets, took 
pains to formulate a theory of poetry, from which, fortunately, 
he departed in his higher moods. In the preface to the second 
edition of the Lyrical Ballads he had expressed his conviction that 
the subject matter of poetry should be the objects of common 
life imaginatively treated in the language of prose, the "language 
really used" by men in humble and rustic life; and that "there 
neither is nor can be any essential difference between the language 
of prose and verse." This contention was considerably modified 
in practice, for Wordsworth was not a dramatist; he could not 
reproduce the raciness of rustic speech, even if he had wished to 



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do so. He was simply pleading for greater simplicity of diction 
in poetry, freedom from the artificial tricks of the eighteenth 
century poets, and this simplicity of diction is a striking character- 
istic of Wordsworth's poetry. 

Wordsworth's poetry inculcates lessons of sympathy, serenity, 
assurance, faith in man and God, and hope; in it there is counsel 
and sound philosophy, and there is "joy in widest commonalty 
spread." He declared that "Every great poet is a teacher; I 
wish to be considered as a teacher, or as nothing." And the ulti- 
mate purpose of his verse, he wrote in a letter to Lady Beaumont, 
was "to console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by 
making the happy happier, to teach the young and gracious of 
every age to see, think, and feel, and therefore, to become more 
actively and sincerely virtuous." 

The limitations of Wordsworth are evident enough: he is 
sometimes prolix and tedious; he has little dramatic power; and 
hence the young reader, who likes action, is apt at first to find 
him dull. Undoubtedly, great stretches of his poetry are prosaic 
and may be passed over. But when all has been said, the impres- 
sive fact remains that Wordsworth's poetry is a fountain of refresh- 
ment and consolation and that he who learns to love it will find 
in it perpetual spiritual enrichment. He is a poet whom one can- 
not outgrow, so deeply rooted is he in reality, so steadfastly true 
is he to the primal instincts of the human spirit, and so soundly 
beneficent is the example of his own dedicated life. 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834) 

Last night he (Coleridge) concluded his fine development 
of the Prince of Denmark by an eloquent statement of the 
moral of the play. "Action," he said, "is the great end of 
all; no intellect, however grand, is valuable, if it draw us 
from action and lead us to think and think until the time of 
action is passed by, and we can do nothing." Somebody said 
tome, "This is a satire on himself." "No," said I, "it is 
an elegy." — From the Diary of Henry Crabbe Robinson. 



His Life. — Very different from that of the serene and steady Wordsworth 
is the career of his friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic, philosopher, 



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and marvelous talker. Born in 1772 at Ottery St. Mary's in Devonshire, 
where his father, learned and eccentric, was vicar and schoolmaster, Cole- 
ridge was early left an orphan. So precocious was he — he had read the Bible 
and the Arabian Nights by the time he was five — that at ten he was 
sent, through the kindness of a friend, to Christ's Hospital School, London, 
where he remained eight or nine years. Here he met Charles Lamb, who 
later wrote so delightfully of him as "the inspired charity boy." 1 A bril- 
liant but irregular student, Coleridge was ever a unique figure: he spouted 
philosophy, recited Homer, explored the fields about London, delighted 
in the grim sights of the old Tower, lay on hot nights flat on his back on 
the roof of the school building gazing at the stars and muttering strange 
fancies. Altogether, he was quite incomprehensible to the other "blue- 
coat boys," with whom, it is said, he associated very little. In 1791 
he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, where he remained, with short periods 
of absence — as, for instance, a brief stay in London as member of the Dra- 
goons — for three or four years, leaving without his degree. 

While at the University, Coleridge had written several poems; he was 
better known, however, as the leading spirit among a band of youthful 
champions of the liberal ideas for which the French Revolution stood. 
He had meanwhile formed a friendship with Southey, who was at Oxford, 
and the two young enthusiasts planned an ideal community on the banks of 
the Susquehanna in America (the name "Susquehanna" had a romantic 
sound to them). Lack of funds, together with the marriage of the two young 
men about this time, indefinitely delayed this Utopian scheme, poetically 
named Pantisocracy 2 and dreamed of as a social Eden. For the next two 
or three years Coleridge lectured, wrote poetry, planned a new literary 
periodical, The Watchman — actually started, but soon discontinued, — and 
even preached, having temporarily turned Unitarian. In 1797 he met 
Wordsworth, and so intimate did the friendship with the Wordsworths 
become, that Wordsworth and Dorothy rented a cottage near Coleridge who 
was now living at Nether Stowey in Dorsetshire. The next year, as already 
related, Coleridge and Wordsworth together brought out the Lyrical 
Ballads, then went to the continent. Coleridge spent over a year in Ger- 
many learning the language and studying German philosophy. He returned 
in 1799, and the next year moved to the Lakes to be near Southey and Words- 
worth. 

From 1800 to the end, Coleridge's life is a series of plannings, brief 
periods of real work, and pathetic failures. Several years before, he had 
contracted the opium-habit, having taken the drug at first to relieve neu- 

1 See Lamb's Essay, Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago. 

2 Meaning "government by all in common" — an ideal commonwealth, like the later "Brook 
Farm" experiment in Massachusetts. 



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ralgic pains and then to get relief from mental disquiet at his failures and 
domestic unhappiness. Offered positions on London papers as contributor 
and critic, Coleridge accepted and for a short time worked steadily; 
then resigned, turned to lecturing — at which he was successful until he lost 
his audiences by failing to keep engagements, — planned a great work, 
actually wrote a literary autobiography and a series of reflections on phil- 
osophy, but really completed nothing. He had spent the years 1800-1816 
mostly near Keswick in the Lake District and in London. 

In 1816 he went to Dr. Gillman's at Highgate, a London suburb, and 
there as the "Sage of Highgate" he spent the rest of his life. His friend 
Gillman virtually succeeded in curing him of the opium habit by gradually 
reducing the daily amount to a minimum. In this friendly haven Cole- 
ridge, removed from the cares of practical life by the generosity of admir- 
ers, lived for eighteen years a striking figure, visited by famous pilgrims, 
among them Lamb, Carlyle, Emerson, and Harriet Martineau — drawn 
thither by his reputation as the most wonderful converser of the age. Here 
in 1834 the end came peacefully, and the poet-philosopher was laid to rest in 
Highgate Church. 

His Personality. — Extraordinarily gifted, pathetically irreso- 
lute, brilliant architect of structures unfinished, Coleridge the man 
is an illustration of tragic will-weakness. He could plan glori- 
ously, but he was rarely able to execute fully. He was zigzagging 
all his life. The best picture of Coleridge is the word painting by 
Carlyle who visited him at Highgate and heard him talk: "Brow 
and head were round and of massive weight, but the face was 
flabby and irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as 
full of sorrow as of inspiration; confused pain looked mildly from 
them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and 
air, good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and 
irresolute; expressive of weakness under possibility of strength. 
He hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping atti- 
tude; in walking he rather shuffled than decisively stept; and a 
lady once remarked he never could fix which side of the garden 
walk would suit him best, but continually shifted, corkscrew 
fashion, and kept trying both." 

The familiar story about the meeting of Lamb and Coleridge 
in a London street, while doubtless an exaggeration, illustrates 
Coleridge's habit of prolonged talk regardless of circumstances: 



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Coleridge met Lamb in a crowded street, caught him by a button 
on his coat and drew him aside into a doorway or passage, where 
he poured forth for an hour in even tones an unbroken monologue, 
keeping his eyes shut most of the time, as was his wont. Lamb, 
having other business, gently cut off the button and went his 
way, and on returning several hours later found Coleridge still 
holding the button and still talking. Despite his flabbiness of 
will, Coleridge had one of the keenest, most logical minds of the 
century as well as a great imagination and delicate sympathies. 

His Works and Literary Characteristics. — The work of Cole- 
ridge falls into three fairly well-defined divisions — Poetry, Criti- 
cism, Philosophy. His most noteworthy poems are: "The Ancient 
Mariner," published in the Lyrical Ballads, and owing a suggestion 
— the shooting of the albatross — to Wordsworth; "Christabel," 
incomplete; "Kubla Khan," a fragment of fifty-four lines; "Ode 
to France," "Dejection," "Youth and Age," "Hymn Before Sun- 
rise in the Vale of Chamouni." To these should be added his 
translation of Schiller's Wallenstein, in some respects an improve- 
ment on the original. Small in volume though it is, Coleridge's 
verse is in quality among the finest in English literature. The 
most significant of his prose works are the Biographia Literaria, 
or Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions, and Lectures on 
Shakespeare, both abounding in sane and illuminating expositions 
of poetic theory and dramatic art; and the Aids to Reflection, a 
discussion of German idealistic philosophy. 

Coleridge held that the peculiar province of the poet is to make 
the supernatural, the weird, the impossible, seem natural by a 
realistic treatment, — that is, by the use of easily understood 
words and images. This theory finds perfect illustration in his 
greatest poem, "The Ancient Mariner." "The Ancient Mariner" 
is a romantic ballad having to do with absurdly unreal things — 
ghosts, a phantom ship, strange voices, magic winds, unearthly 
music, a curse and expiation — so plausibly told that we almost 
believe it a true account of an adventure in far-off seas. Then, 
too, the moral is so wholesome that we are willing to credit the 
queer story for the light it throws on the redeeming power of 



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love. "Charity never faileth," even in the case of sinning mariners 
on impossible seas. This is, indeed, a great ballad of charity: 
love heals and restores; hate alienates and destroys. The lesson is 
stated at the end; we lose connection with God when we cease to 
love His creatures: 

He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small; 
For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all. 

In "Christabel," which has a delicately mediaeval flavor, a beau- 
tiful young girl suffers from the malign influence of a witch, or 
sorceress, disguised under the fajr form of the Lady Geraldine. 
The poem is a fragment; after writing the first part, Coleridge 
somehow lost the thread of inspiration, and, though he intended 
all his life to complete the story, he was never able to do so. The 
poem, entrancingly beautiful in its twilight region between the 
real and dreamful, abruptly ends at a critical point, and the out- 
come is left to fancy. "Kubla Khan," another fragment, is full 
of verbal harmonies. After he had written fifty-four lines, the 
poet was suddenly called out on business, and the rest of the 
poem — a dream of the morning — vanished from Coleridge's brain. 
It is interesting to note that in the matter of moral suggestion, 
as seen in Ur the Ancient Mariner," Coleridge and the American 
Hawthorne are not unlike, while in verbal music Coleridge and 
Poe resemble each ether: all these are alike in. their fondness for 
weird, uncanny themes. This love of the mysterious is the very 
essence of Romanticism. 

Coleridge is one of the acutest and soundest of literary critics, 
as a reading of his Biographia Literaria will make clear. This 
book is very largely a discussion of Wordsworth's theory of poetry, 
with which, it is by this time evident, he only partly agreed. 
Coleridge preferred to apply simple, imaginative treatment to 
the unusual, while Wordsworth, as already pointed out, idealizes 
familiar things. Next to his reputation as a poet is Coleridge's 
fame as a Shakespearean critic. His lectures on the plays are 



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to-day among the most discriminating judgments ever pronounced 
on the great dramatist. Because he interpreted the plays directly 
and naturally, Coleridge deserves to be called the first modern 
Shakespeare critic. Finally, by bringing back from Germany the 
new idealistic philosophy known as "Transcendentalism," he 
helped to counteract the baneful effects of the English Materialists 
and to influence English thought for fifty years. Carlyle owed 
much to Coleridge, as did Emerson and the other New England 
Transcendentalists. 

THE POETS OF REVOLT: BYRON AND SHELLEY 

Byron and Shelley are regarded as the most revolutionary of 
the Romantic poets. They reflect both in their lives and writings 
the spirit of social revolt which we associate with those unsettled 
times immediately following the French Revolution. Both 
rebelled against established customs and angrily left England 
for Italy, restless exiles the rest of their short lives. Though 
they differed widely in temperament and poetic expression, they 
are not unlike in their attitude toward conservative England, 
and in their tragic, almost spectacular deaths — the one romantic- 
ally contending for Greek freedom, the other battling with the 
storm in the darkened Mediterranean. Compared with the serene 
and steady Wordsworth and Scott, or even with the irresolute 
Coleridge, Byron and Shelley are like wanderers over unquiet 
seas. Of the two B^on has excited the greater popular interest; 
for many years after his death, "Byronism" had a fascination for 
sentimentalists; then his fame suffered a slight eclipse. More 
lately, however, the man and the poet have been accorded a more 
discriminating treatment. Shelley's fame, of slower growth, has 
suffered no reaction : he has long held a secure place among the 
supreme lyric poets of the world. 

GEORGE GORDON BYRON (1788-1824) 

His Life. — George Gordon Byron was born in London in 1788, son of Cap- 
tain Jack Byron and Katherine Gordon of Aberdeen. On his father's side 



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BYRON IN ORIENTAL COSTUME 



he was descended from the Scandinavian Vikings and on his mother's from 
the Scotch Highlanders. This is worth remembering in an estimate of his 
life. His father was a wild, dissipated army-captain who deserted his wife 
rzhen Byron was a child. Left to the care of his mother, the boy, moody 
and sensitive because of a deformed foot, found in her alternate fits of 
temper and affection a source of unhappiness. She caressed him one minute 
and called him a "lame brat" the next. This early home-life naturally 
affected his career, making an already violent disposition lawless and 
defiant. He first went to school in Aberdeen, whither his parents had gone 
when he was a baby; then he was taken to London and next to Dulwich 
Academy, and finally to Harrow, the great preparatory school for the 
universities. At ten Byron had become ''Lord Byron by the death of a 
great uncle, from whom he inherited the ancestral estate of Newstead. 
Somewhat unpopular at school because of his shy, sensitive, and rebellious 
nature, he nevertheless proved himself a good swimmer and rider, even 
if he was a poor student. 

At Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1805, his life 
was notoriously irregular, though not so lawless as his earlier biographers 



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would have us believe. He kept a coach, a valet, dogs, and a pet bear, 
and delighted in shocking the authorities whom he regarded as narrow and 
bigoted. The contradictions and perversities which characterize Byron's 
whole life are conspicuous in his Cambridge career; for while he was an 
indifferent student — the consequences of which are to be seen in occasional 
grammatical and rhetorical lapses in his poetry, — he was at the same time 
a wide reader; his favorite books, oddly enough, were the Old Testament 
and Pope's poems. 

In 1808 Byron left the University without a degree, went to London and 
took his seat in the House of Lords; but disappointed at his cold reception, 
he proceeded to Newstead and indulged in a prolonged carouse with some 
jolly companions; then went to the continent for two years, during which 
he began Childe Harold, besides writing shorter poems. When the first 
part of Childe Harold was published in 1812, he "awoke and found himself 
famous." Society praised and petted and indulged the young lion, and 
mothers with marriageable daughters smiled upon him. In 1815 he married 
Miss Milbanke. The next year they separated and were never reconciled. 
No one knows the exact cause of the trouble; "incompatibility of temper" 
is the handiest phrase with which to dismiss the matter. 1 A great hue and 
cry was raised against Byron; the popular idol became the outcast of society. 
In anger and disgust he left England forever in 1816. 

The remaining eight years of Byron's life were spent for the most part in 
Italy at Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa. He lived with the Shelleys for a 
while at Geneva, and then passed on into Italy. The influence of Shelley 
proved distinctly beneficial to him, and it is a pity he did not have more 
of that restraining companionship. But Byron must be Byron; tired of 
dreams and inaction, he passed on to Venice. In that gay city he 
plunged into the wildest dissipation. His health began to give way. About 
this time he formed a connection with the Countess Guiccioli at Ravenna; 
as culpable as that relationship was, it at least saved him from the 
headlong ruin of his previous Venetian life. He now wrote much poetry 
with amazing rapidity; planned an editorial partnership with Leigh Hunt 
at Pisa on The Liberal, a new journal in the interest of Italian freedom, of 
which Byron was a strenuous advocate; and saw more of Shelley and other 
Englishmen. 

In 1823 Byron resolved to go to Greece and take part in the struggle for 
freeing that classic land from Turkish rule. He fitted out a yacht with 
his own money and along with his friend Trelawney and a trusty crew set 
sail for Greece. There in 1824 he was made commander-in-chief of a band 
of Greeks, whom he controlled and won by his great personal charm. Stricken 
with a fever, he lingered for two months or more, dying at Missolonghi, 



m i See Hinchman and Gummere's Lives of Great English Writers, pp. 372-375, for a fresh and 
interesting discussion of the case. 



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317 



April 19, 1824, in his thirty-seventh year. Greece mourned and old chief- 
tains wept over the dead champion of liberty. "Nothing in his life became 
him like the leaving it." Three months before, as if with a premonition 
of the end, he had written this noble stanza: 

If thou regretst thy life — why live? 
The land of honourable death 
Is here — up to the field and give 
Away thy breath. 

Refused a tomb in Westminster Abbey, he was buried at Newstead Abbey , 
his ancestral seat. 

His Personality. — There was a Byron of weakness, vanity, 
insufferable egotism, and there was a Byron of strength and sin- 
cerity. He had a fondness for shocking conventionally proper 
people, and he liked to pose as the injured idol of society ? with a 
kind of morbid enjoyment of any dramatic situation of which he 
found himself the center; he was a man of moods, out of which 
grew his sentimental melancholy as well as his cynical defiance. 
On the other hand, there is the Byron who hated shams and bigotry, 
the man of immense industry when the working mood was on 
him, the abstemious athlete who could swim the Hellespont and 
control rebellious soldiers, and endure cold and hunger; and, 
finally, there is the Byron who writes tenderly of his daughter, 
forgivingly of Lady Byron and her companions, affectionately 
of his friends, and devotedly to his stepsister Augusta. All these 
traits are in the man, not so bad at heart as weak, and in his 
passionate ravings more childish than criminal. In his nobler 
moments he was a passionate defender of liberty; and when it is 
remembered that he lived in a revolutionary age, that he had in 
his veins the fiery blood of Viking and Highlander, and that in 
his youth he lacked wise direction, his strenuous life of combat 
against what he considered social and political oppression has in 
it the redeeming qualities of sincerity and strength. 

His Works and Literary Characteristics. — Byron's poetry may 
be conveniently classified as follows: (1) Shorter Poems of Lyric 
Nature, such as those embraced in Hours of Idleness (1807) an<j. 



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Hebrew Melodies; (2) Narrative, such as "Mazeppa" and "Prisoner 
of Chillon"; (3) Descriptive of Travels: Childe Harold (1812), a 
record of personal impressions; (4) Satires, such as English Bards 
and Scotch Reviewers, Don Juan, and The Vision of Judgment; 
(5) Oriental Tales, such as the "Bride of Abydos" and the "Giaour; 
and (6) Dramas, such as Manfred, Cain, Marino Faliero, etc. 

Byron is part classicist: his satires, English Bards <and Scotch 
Reviewers and Vision of Judgment, are a continuation of the manner 
of Dryden and Pope, of whom he was a great admirer. We have 
the cut and sting of the epigrammatic rhyming couplet. Byron 
lashed his enemies unmercifully, but he lacks the finished art of 
the great masters of satire. He is at his best in narrative and 
descriptive verse, such as that found in "Mazeppa' 1 and the "Pris- 
oner of Chillon" and especially in Childe Harold, in many respects 
his greatest poem, and in the oriental poems like the "Bride of 
Abydos." Here he gives his genius for rapid narration full sway, 
with the result that the reader is borne along on a dashing adven- 
ture, the pleasure of .which is enhanced by stretches of splendid 
description. No wonder Scott turned from poetry to novel writing 
when Childe Harold and the other great poems of Byron caught 
the popular fancy and showed the "wizard of the North" that a 
poetic rival was about to supplant him. 

The dramas have fine passages in them, but they are too self- 
centered, too personal, too rhetorical, for real plays. There is 
little or no action; it is Byron on the stage declaiming all the 
time; there is little variety in the long monologues under differ- 
ent names, but really uttered by the same man posing variously. 
Marino Faliero, the tragic story of the conspiring Doge of Venice, 
is perhaps the most dramatic, though Manfred is more romantic. 
Scattered through the longer poems and the dramas are lyrics 
of wonderful power and beauty, as "The Isles of Greece," in Don 
Juan. Whenever Byron sang of Greece it was in tones of passion- 
ate devotion, for no other Romantic poet felt more deeply than 
Byron that "homesickness for classic antiquity," which was a 
characteristic of Romanticism. He gave us a new sense of appreci- 
ation of the Orient and of the picturesque features of the conti- 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



319 



nent of Europe — its rivers, mountains, and lakes. Greece and 
Rome come to life again in his verse; the grandeur and gloom of 
the Alps cast their magic spell around us; and we are made to 
feel the loneliness and loveliness of the ocean. No other poet has 
so reflected in his verse the terrible aspects of nature. Herein 
Byron is in sharp contrast with Wordsworth. 

This bold and dashing treatment of man and nature made 
Byron the best known English poet on the continent of Europe. 
His influence there was immense; a Byronic cult sprang up, which 
has not wholly died out yet. Byron lacks supreme imagination, 
delicacy, sensitiveness, and the "divine faculty of meditation"; 
he is not a great creative genius, but in masculine vigor, in vivid- 
ness, in unrestrained movement, and in magnificent rhetoric, 
his poetry is at once vital and eloquent. 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822) 

The universe is his box of toys. He dabbles his 
fingers in the dayfall. He is gold-dusty with 
tumbling amid the stars. He makes bright mis- 
chief with the moon. The meteors nuzzle their 
noses in his hand. He teases into growling the 
kennelled thunder, and laughs at the shaking of its 
fiery chain. He dances in and out of the gates of 
Heaven : its floor is littered with his broken fancies. 
He runs wild over the fields of ether. He chases 
the rolling world. — Francis Thompson on Shelley. 

His Life. — Percy Bysshe Shelley, most ethereal of English poets, was 
born at Field Place, Sussex, in 1792, the son of Sir Timothy Shelley, a 
baronet of prosaic temperament and conventional ideas. Young Shelley 
was of highly imaginative nature and peopled the region with strange 
beings about whom he told his sisters wild stories. At Eton, where he was 
sent to be prepared for the university, Shelley spent most of his time reading 
books not in the prescribed course, and performing scientific experiments. 
His schoolfellows could not understand the shy, sensitive, eccentric youth, 
who took no part in their sports and rebelled against the system of ' 'fagging. ' ' 
In 1810 Shelley went to University College, Oxford. He was full of enthu- 
siasm, his friend Hogg tells us, for all sorts of reform and for the marvels of 
science, and kept his room littered with chemical apparatus. Disgusted 



320 



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PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 



at the intolerance of Oxford, the young philosopher wrote and published 
a tract on The Necessity of Atheism, which caused his expulsion from the 
University. It was an impulsive, boyish utterance, and would not cause 
a ripple of excitement in the Oxford of to-day. Shelley went, along with 
Hogg, who thoroughly sympathized Math him, to London. There he met 
Harriet Westbrook, a schoolmate of his two sisters, who said that she was 
being persecuted at the boarding school for her liberal opinions. Shelley's 
liberty-loving sympathies were aroused and he chivalrously and precipi- 
tately married the pretty girl. His father, greatly offended at this, to say 
nothing of the Oxford affair, promptly disinherited the youth of nineteen 
with his sixteen-year-old wife. An uncle came to the rescue and saved the 
two from abject poverty. 

All went well for two or three years. Shelley wrote poems and also 
reform pamphlets, the latter for the cause of Catholic emancipation in 
Ireland. Meanwhile he had made the acquaintance of William Godwin, 
the socialist writer, and in 1814 he met Godwin's daughter Mary, intellec- 
tual and beautiful. Deserting Harriet, with whom there had been some 
disagreement, Shelley eloped with Mary Godwin to Switzerland. Two 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



321 



years later, 1816, after Harriet's death, they were formally married. The 
desertion of Harriet is the one serious blot on Shelley's character. The 
marriage was hasty and there had been no real love, certainly on Shelley's 
part; Mary Godwin was a kindred spirit and socially equal. All this, how- 
ever, does not excuse the violation of sacred and social laws; but, along 
with another consideration — Shelley's irresponsible nature — it throws 
light on the matter, if it does not condone it. But for the death of his grand- 
father about this time, Shelley would have been in dire straits; on the 
thousand pounds a year from the estate he lived comfortably and gave, 
besides, much in practical charity. The two years from 1816 to 1818 Shelley 
spent partly in Switzerland, partly in England at Great Marlow, on the 
Thames, where he met Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, John Keats, and other 
notable men and where he wrote several of his best poems, among them 
"Alastor." In 1818, because of bad health and hostile criticism, Shelley 
left England for sunny Italy. 

The four remaining years of Shelley's life were spent at various places in 
Italy — Venice, Florence, Pisa, Rome, Naples, — but he lived longest at Pisa 
and at Lerici on the Gulf of Spezzia. He was with Byron from time to time 
and came to know him well; though different in character, the two men 
were drawn together by their love of liberty and beauty. Trelawney, an 
art-loving Englishman, and Leigh Hunt were much with the Shelleys. At 
Rome in 1819 Shelley wrote most of Prometheus Unbound and the Cenci, 
two of his greatest works, sitting amid the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla 
or the Colosseum. That year was the most fertile of his short life. Early 
in July, 1822, Shelley went in a sailboat to meet Leigh Hunt at Leghorn; 
on the return trip to Lerici, July 8, the little boat ran into a violent squall 
and was lost. Ten days later Shelley's body was washed ashore; in his 
pockets were a copy of Sophocles and a volume of Keats. The body was 
burned in the presence of Byron, Trelawney, and Leigh Hunt, and the 
ashes buried in the English cemetery at Rome not far from the grave of 
Keats. Following the name are the words, "Cor Cordium," and these 
lines from Ariel's song in the Tempest: 

Nothing of him that doth fade, 
But doth suffer a sea-change 
Into something rich and strange. 

His Personality. — Personal beauty combined with mental 
energy, a passion for liberty, and the most delicate poetic sensi- 
bility, — these are the striking characteristics of Shelley. He 
never lost his boyish appearance and he would 'blush like a girl' 
when meeting strangers; he had at times a deer-like, startled look 



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and a swift way of gliding in and out of a company, which reminds 
one of the line in "Adonais," — 

A pardlike Spirit, beautiful and swift. 

The general impression which one gets from reading Hogg's 
account of Shelley, is that of a radiant, eager, unworldly creature 
of sympathetic impulses and pure ideals. An ardent lover of 
abstract liberty and of toleration, he hated air kinds of persecu- 
tion and sought to enthrone reason and to dethrone what he in 
common with other revolutionary enthusiasts of the time regarded 
as superstition or blind adherence to social, political, and religious 
tradition. Out of this attitude grew his professed atheism. For 
the personality of Christ he had, however, a real veneration, 
while his spirit of practical philanthropy is shown in his work 
among the suffering poor while he was living at Great Marlow, 
as well as in his generosity to struggling friends. 

Shelley was an active, though idealistic, reformer, and his care- 
fully written out declaration of principles, together with statements 
in iiis letters, reveal a fundamental kinship with more practical 
and constructive defenders of liberty, such, for instance, as the 
author of the American Declaration of Independence. A careful 
reading of Shelley's prose will bring increased respect for him as 
a thinker. Had he lived longer, this "immortal child," this "beau- 
tiful and ineffectual angel," might have given his visionary ideal- 
ism a steadier, soberer tone. 

Shelley's Poetry. — Among the poems composed by Shelley in 
England, the most important are: Queen Mab (1813), a crude 
and immature tirade against tyranny and superstition expressed 
in oriental imagery, a poem never publicly printed with Shelley's 
consent; Alastor (1815), a blank- verse poem of delicate romantic 
beauty unfolding the dreams of a wandering poet-spirit, sugges- 
tive here and there of Wordsworth's manner; The Revolt of Islam 
(1817), a long work in the Spenserian stanza on the struggle of a 
youth and a maiden to bring to pass for the good of humanity 
their dreams of ideal liberty — a "romance of revolution," it has 



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323 



been called; and the exquisite "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty' ' 
(1816), in which Shelley dedicates himself to the Spirit of Freedom. 

The four years in Italy brought forth such supreme lyrics as 
"The Skylark," "Ode to the West Wind," "The Cloud," "The 
Sensitive Plant," "The Indian Serenade"; and the longer poems, 
Lines on the Euganean Hills, Epipsychidion, Prometheus U nbound, 
The Cenci, and Adonais. The shorter poems, it will be noted, deal 
with clouds, winds, high-soaring birds, and the like, which Shelley, 
by some subtle magic, makes one with his own spirit: he mingles 
with the clouds, becomes an elemental part of the west wind, is 
himself the singing skylark and the delicate plant. He loved to 
write out in the wind and feel its breath, or hide himself in clouds 
of mist along the streams or in the mountains; and thus he seems 
to lose himself in the elements. 

This spirit-like mingling with nature gives his poetry that 
elusive, rainbow quality, that ethereal coloring, and those dreamy 
cadences which haunt one's imagination and baffle analysis. 
He is the poet of impalpable dreams, of winds and clouds, of 
unearthly loveliness, of cavernous gloom and visionary gleams. 
It is all far removed from the ordinary attitude of mind. Now 
and then, in rare moments of detachment from the practical con- 
cerns of life, we may get in sight of his bright world, but we can- 
not live there habitually. We may catch the nutter of his "lumin- 
ous wings," we may see in a radiant moment the sheen of the star 
dust on them as he passes us in his meteoric flight, and then we 
lose the gleam and even doubt the vision, so hard is it to "see 
Shelley plain." 

His is the most ethereal poetry in our literature, the pure essence 
of song "unmixed with baser matter," the highest lyric reach, 
the utterance of a disembodied spirit that breathes 

On the brink of the night and the morning, 

and drinks of "the whirlwind's stream." It has little positive 
ethical quality, though it vaguely suggests high and holy ardors, 
enthusiasm for truth and freedom, and a passion for ideal beauty. 
It is the poetry of eternal youth and radiant hope. 



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ENGLISH LITERATURE 



All things considered, the greatest of Shelley's works are Adonais 
and Prometheus Unbound. Adonais is an elegy on the death of 
John Keats, between whom and Shelley there existed a poetic 
rather than a personal friendship. The pathos of Keats's early 
death and the unjust attacks on his poetry by the reviewers aroused 
Shelley's sympathy and indignation, and the result was Adonais, 
one of the three supreme elegies in our language, the others being 
Milton's Lycidas and Tennyson's In Memoriam. In Adonais 
Shelley is less vague than usual; the verse shows more restraint, 
and leads one to speculate on what the years might have done 
toward ripening his art. The undertone of melancholy in Adonais 
— heard in all of Shelley's greatest verse (compare lines in "The 
Skylark") — and the strong personal note, give to this poem, in 
view of Shelley's tragic death the following year, a peculiar 
interest. 

Prometheus Unbound is a drama on the redemption of man- 
kind from the tyranny of tradition, one of the most splendid 
creations of the human mind. Prometheus stands for humanity, 
which has been chained to a rock by Jupiter, who stands for the 
shackling power of superstition and tradition. By the might of 
Demogorgon, who is Revolution, Prometheus (mankind) is set 
free from the tyrant, and, united to Asia, the spirit of love and 
man's ideal, lives triumphant in a reign of universal peace. This 
great drama of love and hope is the finest expression of revolution 
literature among the poets of Romanticism. Its abstruse and 
shadowy allegory is varied by some of the most enchantingly 
beautiful lyrics in English poetry. Prometheus Unbound is a 
gorgeous rhapsody on human freedom. 

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821) 

His Life. — John Keats, youngest of the greater romantic poets, was 
born in London in 1795, the son of Thomas Keats, a livery-stable keeper. 
He attended a school at Enfield, near London, where his courage and gener- 
osity made him exceedingly popular. Young Keats was a good fighter and 
a successful student. Charles Cowden Clarke, the son of the headmaster 
of the school, encouraged him to read the English poets, lending him, among 
others, a volume of Spenser. The reading of The Faerie Queene may be 



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325 




JOHN KEATS 



said to have determined the course of Keats' s life; for although he left 
school at fifteen — his father and mother having meanwhile died — and 
apprenticed himself to a surgeon, his mind was more on poetry than on 
anatomy. Still, he studied medicine for several years, served in the Lon- 
don hospitals, and creditably passed his final examinations at Apothecaries' 
Hall. But he had little enthusiasm for his profession, as may be inferred 
from his oft-quoted remark to Cowden Clarke: "The other day, during the 
lecture, there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop of 
creatures floating in the ray; and I was off with them to Oberon and fairy- 
land." Shortly after this he met Leigh Hunt, the rising editor, poet, and 
liberal, who praised some poems Keats had written, and urged him to give 
his life to literature. This Keats decided to do, and with the publication 
of his first volume of poems in 1817 formally dedicated himself to poetry. 

With rare consecration he now set to work to perfect himself in his art, 
studying, reading, writing. Meanwhile, he was making many valuable 
friendships: he met Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt; 
but more intimate than with any of these was his association with Charles 
Armitage Brown and the artist Joseph Severn, both of whom loved and 



ENGLISH LiTERATORE 



generously befriended him. Most of the years of active authorship, from 
1817 to 1820, were spent in and around London, chiefly at Hampstead, 
though Keats made trips to Scotland, the Lake District, and other parts 
of the country. Feeling the need of wider knowledge and experience, he 
wrote in 1818: "For although I take poetry to be chief, yet there is some- 
thing else wanting to one who passes his life among books. * * * * *I find 

there is no worthy pursuit, 
but the idea of doing some 
good to the world * * * * 
There is but one way for 
me. The road lies through 
application, study, and 
thought * * * * I will 
pursue it, and for that end 
purpose retiring some 
years." He spent four 
months tramping in the 
Highlands, because he 
thought it "would give me 
more experience, rub off 
more prejudice, use me to 
more hardship, identify 
finer scenes, * * * and 
strengthen more my reach 
in poetry than would stop- 
ping at home among my 
books." 

The reviewers, especial- 
ly the editor of the London 
Quarterly, had been inex- 
cusably severe in their 
criticisms of Endymion, 
which appeared in 1818; 
but their hostility did not 
kill John Keats. Indeed, 
he took these strictures 
very calmly. There was, 
however, a more insidious 
foe lying in wait for him than hide-bound reviewers. As early as 1817, 
Coleridge, after shaking hands with Keats one day, remarked to a friend, 
when the young poet had passed on: "There is death in that hand." So 
it proved to be. In 1819 his health began to give way, and by the summer 
of 1820, he was seriously ill and could not think of spending the winter in 




KEATS-SHELLEY MEMORIAL AT ROME 
House in which Keats died 



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327 



England. His friends urged him to go to Italy, and Joseph Severn 
volunteered to accompany him. There were no near kin upon whom he 
could depend: his brother Tom had died of consumption, and George was 
in America. Keats had become engaged to Fanny Brawne, but his 
failing health and comparative poverty made marriage out of the ques- 
tion. To Rome along with his devoted friend Severn he went in the 
fall of 1820. The rest of this brave struggle against disease was in the 
"Eternal City" at the house on the Piazza di Spagna which is now, 
thanks to English and American admirers, the Keats-Shelley Memorial. 
Here on February 23, 1821, John Keats died in his twenty-sixth year. 
He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome; not far away repose 
the ashes of Shelley. 

His Personality. — According to the testimony of his many 
friends, John Keats was an uncommonly lovable man. His man- 
liness is the first characteristic that impresses one in reading his 
own letters as well as the letters about him from those who knew 
him well. Courage, frankness, artistic sensitiveness shine in his 
open face and large bright eyes. His friend Haydon speaks of 
Keats's "eager, inspired look," when poetry was the subject of 
talk; other friends bear tribute to his humor, good temper, and 
generosity. We may put Keats along with Wordsworth as a 
man of blameless life and noble ideals. In the dark days before 
his death, he had wished his epitaph to be, "Here lies one whose 
name was writ in water"; but in healthier moments he had said, 
"I think I shall be among the English poets after my death." 
Extremely sensitive, battling against disease, and deeply in love, 
with no prospect of realizing his dream of happiness, Keats pre- 
sents a pathetic and tragic picture; his youth, his genius, his 
nobleness, his lofty aims, and his early death, make him one of 
the most interesting figures in our literature. Not less remarkable 
than his delicate poetic genius is his solidity of character: "The 
thing to be seized is," says Matthew Arnold, "that Keats had 
flint and iron in him, that he had character." 

The Poetry of Keats. — The first slender volume of Keats's 
poems appeared in 1817, the last in 1820; and yet in these few 
years, he did enough to insure him a place among the great poets 



328 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



of England. One immortal sonnet, inspired by reading Chap- 
man's translation of Homer, and beginning, 

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold ; 

Endymion, an immature poem of luxuriant beauty; the fragment 
Hyperion, the poems, "Isabella," "Lamia," "La Belle Dame 
Sans Merci," "Eve of St. Agnes," and the exquisite odes, "To 
a Nightingale" and "On a Grecian Urn": this is the principal 
work of Keats. For rapid development, considering the high 
quality of these poems, it would be hard to find a parallel among 
our poets. It makes one pause to conjecture what might have 
been, had not fate "slit the thin-spun life" so soon. 

The inspiration of Keats's verse is Greek mythology and me- 
diaeval romance, while to Spenser and the other Elizabethans he 
owed much. In that antique world of fair forms and haunting 
melodies he lived: Clarke said that "he ramped through The 
Faerie Queene like a young horse turned into a spring meadow." 
Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley, he cared 
nothing for the French Revolution and the great social, political, 
and religious tumult of the time. He sat apart absorbed in the 
worship of pure beauty. Shelley was a reformer, eagerly singing 
about human perfectibility and passionately proclaiming a Golden 
Age. "O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts!" exclaimed 
Keats. In his love for form, the plastic side, Keats is Greek; in 
his love for color, the pictorial side, he is mediaeval and Elizabeth- 
an : in him the sensuous element of Romanticism finds its purest 
expression. 

The poetic creed of Keats may be summed up in a few well- 
known lines — one from Endymion, 

A thing of beauty is a joy forever,— 

and the others from the "Ode on a Grecian Urn," 

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 



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329 



To these poetic utterances may be added Keats's remark in a 
letter to his brother George : "With a great poet the sense of beauty 
overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all 
consideration. " He loved beauty in the abstract simply for 
beauty's sake, without a thought of making beauty serve any 
human or divine purpose. He did not, therefore, agree with 
Wordsworth that the poet should be a teacher; he should be pre- 
eminently an interpreter of beauty, according to Keats. He and 
Shelley are alike chiefly in their love for ideal beauty; beyond that, 
likeness ceases. Keats's poetry is consequently without spiritual 
and moral ardor; but it is full of rich, luxurious charm that takes 
the senses captive. Take two poems by way of illustration, 
"The Eve of St. Agnes" and "Ode to a Nightingale.'' These 
poems abound in magic words and phrases that act upon the 
senses like opiates or elixirs: you feel the cold that benumbs the 
old beadsman or the drowsiness that overcomes the maiden "in 
the poppied warmth of sleep," and taste the sweet things in 
this almost sticky stanza: 

And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep, 
In blanched linen, smooth and lavendered, 
While he from forth the closet brought a heap 
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd; 
With jellies soother than the creamy curd, 
And lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon; 
Manna and dates, in argosy transferred 
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one, 
From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon. 

Speaking of the nightingale, Keats says that its song may 
have long ago charmed 

The sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, 
She stood in tears amid the alien corn; 

and then goes on to speak of it as 

The same that oft-times hath 

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 



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ENGLISH LITERATURE 



The words "alien," "magic," "perilous," "forlorn " as here used, 
illustrate Keats's verbal felicity. He is a master in the use of the 
magic word. No other poet has a more exquisite sensitiveness 
to sound and color. Through this faculty he is a precursor of 
Rossetti and Swinburne, and links the Elizabethans with the 
Pre-Raphaelites. 

MINOR ROMANTIC POET? 

Robert Southey (1774-1843).— Robert Southey, one of the so- 
called "Lake Poets," friend and associate of Coleridge and Words- 
worth, spent most of his long life at Greta Hall in the Lake Dis- 
trict, to which place he went in 1803. He was born in Bristol, 
the son of a merchant, educated at Westminster School and at 
Oxford. He planned with Coleridge the dream of an ideal com- 
munity, Pantisocracy, on the Susquehanna, already mentioned; 
later studied law, but found it uncongenial; visited Spain and 
Portugal; and finally, after losing his early interest in revolution- 
ary ideals, made his permanent home near Keswick. Here for 
nearly forty years he wrote voluminously in verse and prose, 
and collected, meanwhile, one of the largest private libraries in 
England. 

Among Southey's numerous works in verse may be mentioned 
Thalaba, The Curse of Kehama, and Roderick, Last of the Goths. 
The first two are oriental stories wrought into readable, but unin- 
spired verse, the result of wide reading and great industry; the 
third is a romantic tale of the last king of the Goths, who defends 
his kingdom against the invading Arabs. These metrical romances 
contain patches of brilliant description, and Roderick, in particu- 
lar, is a rapid piece of narration in which there are passages full 
of fire and color, hie in part to the fact that Southey had visited 
the legendary scenes in Spain. These poems are little read to-da y 
because of their length and lack of high poetic merit. Southey was 
made Poet Laureate in 1813, and some years later wrote a fulsome 
work, The Vision of Judgment, narrating the celestial adventures 
of George III, which provoked Byron's brilliant and withering 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



satire of the same name. The short poems, "Battle of Blenheim" 
and "Lodore," are still popular. Southey has proved to be far 
greater as a writer of prose than as a poet; his admirable Life of 
Nelson is one of the best biographies in our language. 

Thomas Moore (1779-1852). — Thomas Moore, friend of Emmet 
and of Byron, melodious singer, and versatile man of the world, 
was born in Dublin, educated at Trinity College, Dublin Universi- 
ty, and studied law in London. His lilting adaptation of the Odes 
of Anacreon, the Greek lyric poet, made at fifteen and published 
in 1800, brought him into public favor. The next year his Poems 
by Little made the young Irish poet still more popular; but not 
until the appearance of the Irish Melodies (1807), continued off 
and on for many years, did he reach the height of his reputation. 
Meanwhile he had received a government appointment to the 
Bermudas; after staying a short time in the islands, and then visit- 
ing the United States, he returned to England, leaving the duties 
of his office in the hands of a deputy. Later (1818) this deputy, 
through dishonest administration, caused the poet a great financial 
loss. His longest poem, Lalla Rookh, a gorgeous oriental romance, 
appeared in 1817, and was exceedingly popular. The next year 
he published his greatest satire, The Fudge Family in Paris, 
taking off with telling effect the typical Englishman abroad. 
After traveling on the continent, visiting Byron in Italy, and 
spending a year or two in Paris, Moore returned to England and 
gave himself very largely to the writing of biography until his 
death in 1852. 

The fame of Moore rests to-day upon certain of his Irish Melo- 
dies, Lalla Rookh, — less read than formerly, — and his Life and 
Letters of Lord Byron, an interesting work and for a long time the 
standard biography. Moore was a brilliant conversationalist, an 
accomplished musician, and otherwise socially gifted. His charm- 
ing personality and accomplishments made him a welcome guest 
in the highest social circles. His verse is polished and sweet, 
graceful, witty, and tender, but somewhat artificial and suggestive 
of the lights and glitter of the drawing-room. Pleasing as is "The 
Last Rose of Summer, " it is unquestionably lacking in the spon- 



332 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



taneous simplicity of one of Burns's songs, — "Highland Mary/' 
for instance. 

Campbell and Rogers— Thomas Campbell (1777-1844), Scotch 
poet, wrote at the age of twenty-one a long work in rhyming coup- 
lets called The Pleasures of Hope, revealing in its simple lines and 
pleasing descriptions a noble enthusiasm for liberty; for Campbell, 
like the rest of the young dreamers of the day, was at first deeply 
interested in the French Revolution. Later, he wrote Gertrude of 
Wyoming, a romantic story of less poetic vigor than The Pleasures 
of Hope. Campbell's shorter poems, rather than the longer, 
entitle him to lasting remembrance, such as "The Battle of the 
Baltic" and "Ye Mariners of England/' patriotic ballads throbbing 
with the Briton's passion for liberty. 

Samuel Rogers (1763-1855), a London banker of literary tastes 
and a patron of art and man of letters, wrote a long poem called 
The Pleasures of Memory, abounding in finished and descriptive 
passages and cultured allusions, and a metrical account of his 
travels entitled Italy which has been called a "kind of pedestrian 
Childe Harold." He had Romantic sensibilities without a rich 
imagination, and his verse is tedious reading to-day. Rogers 
was an accomplished host and his "literary breakfasts" were long a 
feature in London social life. He brought together at these little 
functions celebrated English men of letters, and, like Maecenas 
of old, presided with dignity and grace. 

THE NOVELISTS 

Romanticism in Prose Fiction. — The work of the first English 

novelists — Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, Smollett — has already 
been considered. These writers, it will be remembered, depicted 
the life of their time in a realistic way, though Richardson and 
Sterne injected into their portrayals more of sentiment than the 
other two. Moreover the novels of Fanny Burney were described 
as transcripts of contemporary manners, or society novels ; and 
the one novel by Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, is a domestic 
novel. Broadly speaking, all these works are realistic novels, — 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



333 



that is, they depict life very much as it is, or as it might be without 
violating our sense of probability. With the rise of Romanticism 
in the latter half of the eighteenth century, however, the novel 
shows the influence of the new movement just as poetry had begun 
to do. Thus, we see in the development of the novel two well- 
defined tendencies, one realistic, the other romantic; and, from 
that day to this, these two tendencies — Realism and Idealism — 
are found side by side or mingling throughout the history of the 
novel. 

There appeared in the year 1764 a story by HORACE WAL- 
POLE, The Castle of Otranto, grotesquely unreal, but nevertheless 
worth remembering because it marks the beginning of what is 
known as the "Gothic Romance. " "Gothic" as here used means 
wild, weird, picturesque, and is usually associated with awe-inspir- 
ing mountain scenery, haunted castles and ruins, subterranean 
passages and ghostly visitants; it is the opposite of the classic 
and conventional. Walpole, who had built a so-called Gothic 
castle at Strawberry Hill on the Thames, conceived a romance 
with scenes laid in the Italy of the twelfth or thirteenth century. 
There are dark towers, trapdoors, damp underground passages, 
large upper rooms with ancestral portraits that descend from the 
walls uttering deep groans, and a giant in armor that shakes him- 
self and scares the servants almost to death. The Castle of Otranto 
is the crude forerunner of a number of such romances. 

The greatest of the writers of Gothic romances (tales of mystery 
revived with greater artistic effect in the short stories of Poe 
and Hawthorne) is ANNE RADCLIFFE (1764-1823), whose Mys- 
teries of Udolpho (1794) used to make her readers feel "creepy" 
on dark, stormy nights. The scene is laid in a mouldy, half- 
ruined castle in the Alps; the heroine, left alone in one of the 
big chambers, hears on wild nights when the wind rocks the 
battlements, strange shrieks and in the lightning flashes sees 
ghostly.forms gliding about. Creaking doors and dim blood-stains 
and rustling curtains fill her with terror. Mechanical as is much 
of the mystification in these stories, Mrs. Radcliffe is not without 
power in her pleasing descriptions of mountain, forest, and sea, 



334 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



under the glow of sunset and the deepening gloom of twilight. 
She is akin to Byron in her ability to invest mountain and sea 
with grandeur. 

The romances of the time fall into three divisions: the Gothic, 
the Oriental, and the Historical. 1 The historical romance is, of 
course, the most important of the three and comes to perfection 
in Walter Scott. Meanwhile, the realistic novel of social life, 
begun by Fanny Burney, is carried on with moral purpose by 
Maria Edgeworth and with greater art as a minute study of local 
manners by Jane Austen. 

Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849). — Maria Edgeworth spent much 
of her life in the heart of Ireland, and out of her study of social 
and economic conditions there her best stories grew. The most 
important of her Irish stories are Castle Rackrent, The Absentee, 
and Ennui. Castle Rackrent (1800) is an entertaining portrayal 
of social conditions in Ireland based on direct observation. Appre- 
ciating the humorous element in the Irish character as fully as 
she pitied the poverty and oppression of Ireland, Miss Edgeworth 
succeeded in depicting the real Irishman with such refreshing 
originality that for the next fifty years writers of Irish stories 
sprang up over England in great numbers. Though her later 
work popularized the society novel, she is still more famous as 
"the creator of the international novel." What is even more 
important, perhaps, is her unconscious influence upon Sir Walter 
Scott, who, impressed with Miss Edgeworth's delineation of 
Irish character, conceived the idea of rendering a like service to 
Scotland. 

JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817) 

Her Life. — Jane Austen, after George Eliot the greatest woman novelist 
in English literature, was the daughter of a clergyman at the village of 
Steventon in Hampshire, southern England. Here the first three of her 
novels were written. She was educated at home along with her sisters, 

x In so brief a work as this a multitude of romances of the later eighteenth 
century must be passed over. Caleb Williams (1794) by William Godwin, 
Shelley's father-in-law, is a typical revolutionary novel, setting forth witb 
didactic purpose certain socialistic theories. 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



335 



but more thoroughly than most girls of the time. In her reading she was 
fond of Richardson, Cowper, and Crabbe — all minute observers of nature, — 
but she did not like Mrs. Radcliffe and the other Gothic romancers. Jane 
Austen's life is an uneventful one: her novels were written in the midst of 
household duties so quietly that few of her acquaintances were aware that 
she was an author. When a publisher was at last found (several had refused 
the manuscripts), the writer's name was not made public; it did not appear 
on her works, indeed, until after her death, though the identity of the author 
was known to many. She wrote neither for fame nor for money. The latter 
part of her life was spent in other parts of her native county and at Bath, 
the fashionable watering-place. At these places — Bath, Southampton, 
Chawton — her last novels were written. Jane Austen died in 1817 at Win- 
chester and was buried in the great cathedral there. 

Her Works. — Jane Austen wrote six novels: Pride and Preju- 
dice (1796-1797), Sense and Sensibility (1797), Northanger Abbey 
(1798), Emma, Mansfield Park, Persuasion, — the last three, written 
after 1801, forming the second group. She did not go out of her 
own experience for scenes and characters, confining herself in the 
choice of material to the little region of south England and its 
country aristocracy and upper middle class society which she knew 
so well. Out of the sayings and doings, the social ambitions, the 
visits and excursions, of a neighborhood she constructs a delight- 
ful comedy of manners in the better language of everyday life. 
She scatters her characters, brings them together in pairs, groups 
them at balls or at dinner parties, all in a very natural manner. 
Her novels consequently produce the illusion of real life. In one 
of her letters Jane Austen wrote: "Three or four families in a 
country village is the very thing to work on." This, in a nut- 
shell, is her material, upon which she works with almost micro- 
scopic art. Her style is clear and flowing, relieved from monotony 
by a gentle irony which gives piquancy to conversation and an 
air of high-bred refinement to her characters. Her active imagina- 
tion lends color and movement to the plot, which now and then 
grows tense in a dramatic situation. Only one of her novels, 
Northanger Abbey, is a manifest satire; in this story she burlesques 
the Gothic romance of the Radcliffe type with great success. 

Jane Austen is a realist. She does what Fielding did, but with 
more fidelity to daily life and with less comic effect. She wrote 



336 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



with no ulterior purpose, but just for the joy of the working, and is 
"one of the sincerest examples in our literature of art for art's 
sake." 1 Her novels were not duly appreciated in her own lifetime, 
but have been gaining in popular favor ever since, and to-day 
Jane Austen ranks as a standard novelist, the only one, indeed, 
of this period worthy to be classed with Sir Walter Scott. Scott 
himself once said of her: "That young lady has a talent for describ- 
ing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life 
which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with." Those who 
like accurate delineation of cheerful, homely scenes, depicted by 
a keen observer of social whims and character-contrasts and not 
without a delicate humor, will find Jane Austen's novels refreshing 
reading in our time of overburdened "purpose novels." Pride 
and Prejudice is generally regarded as her masterpiece. 

SIR WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832) 

His Life. — Walter Scott, greatest of historical novelists, poet and anti- 
quarian, was born in Edinburgh, in 1771, the son of a lawyer and decendant 
of famous Border chieftains. Edinburgh is the center of a region romantic 
in song and story; the old city itself is one of the most picturesque in situa- 
tion and tradition of the cities of the world. A severe fever left Scott weak 
and lame at eighteen months of age, and about a year later he was sent for 
an outdoor life to his grandfather's at Sandy-Knowe on the Tweed. Here 
he remained several years, riding, walking, exploring hills and valleys, and 
listening to the country people as they told stories of border warfare or 
sang scraps of old ballads. This was the beginning of his education in 
romance which later was to blossom so splendidly in his own poems and 
novels. At seven Scott entered the grammar school at Edinburgh, passing 
to the high school, and in 1785 to the University of Edinburgh. At school 
he was a voracious reader of history, ballads, and romances; and was 
known among the boys as a story-teller with an inexhaustible stock of out- 
of-the-way knowledge. In order to read mediaeval romances in the original 
languages, he studied French and Italian, and he left school with a fairly 
good knowledge of Latin. When he was thirteen Percy's Reliques of An- 
cient Poetry, the collection of Scotch and English ballads already men- 
tioned, fell into his hands and was read with eager delight. 

Scott, who had been reading law with his father during his years at the 

1 Cross: The Development of the English Novel, p. 115. 



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University, was admitted to practice in 1792, though he never greatly cared 
for legal proceedings; he was, however, a good lawyer and on occasion could 
put his training to practical use. After his marriage in 1797, he moved to 
Lasswade near Edinburgh, and upon his appointment as Sheriff of Selkirk 
in 1799 made his residence at Ashestiel on the Tweed. Later, about 1812, 
he became clerk of the Court of Session with a good salary. That same year 
he moved to Abbotsford, five miles below Ashestiel, and here with the 
ruins of Melrose and Dryburgh not far away, he spent the rest of his life. 
Abbotsford he built himself in imitation of a feudal castle. Meanwhile he 




ABBOTSFORD 



had even as early as 1796 translated some German romantic poetry, and 
published in 1806 his Border Minstrelsy, forming this same year a partner- 
ship with the Ballantynes, a publishing house in Edinburgh. By 1812 Scott 
had written his greatest poetry. 

The second period of Scott's life, 1814 to 1826, begins with the publica- 
tion of his first novel, Waverley. In the twelve years from 1814 to 1826, 
Scott had won a reputation and a popularity which it is given to few men 
to attain. Royal recognition of his genius came in 1820 with the bestowal 
of a baronetcy by George IV: he was now Sir Walter. His long series of 
novels brought him in a large fortune; his income from his writings alone 
was over $50,000 a year. 

At the height of this prosperity, in 1826, the crash came, and the third 



338 



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period, one of pathetic and strenuous activity, begins. That year the pub- 
lishing house in Edinburgh, of which he had long been a silent partner, 
failed through general mismanagement, and Scott, who was in no wise 
responsible for the failure, found himself liable for ^117,000 ($585,000) of 
the debt. He was fifty-five and Lady Scott had just died. With heroic 
cheerfulness he set himself the task of writing off the debt, and after putting 
Abbotsford into the hands of trustees, went to work with right good will. 
He took lodgings in Edinburgh and all alone began the herculean labor. 
With unremitting diligence he worked until 1830, when a stroke of paralysis 
warned him to rest. 

In 1831 he went on a trip to Italy to recuperate. But it was too late; 
the end was coming, and he wanted to die at Abbotsford. Hither they 
brought the worn-out hero and here, surrounded by his kin, his faithful 
servants, and his favorite dogs, Sir Walter died on September 21, 1832. A 
few days later he was buried in Dryburgh Abbey among his ancestors. Not 
long before his death he called Lockhart, his son-in-law, to his bedside and 
said: "My dear, be a good man, — be virtuous, — be religious, — be a good 
man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here." 
In two years Scott had paid off £40,000 ($200,000) of the debt; the sale 
of new editions of his works still further reduced it before he died, and after 
his death every penny of the debt was finally paid out of the proceeds of 
his works. 

His Personality. — Sir Walter Scott was a big hearted, whole- 
some, manly man, radiating good cheer and moral soundness; 
well-balanced, with practical sense and romantic imagination in 
happy equilibrium, — the most symmetrical of the writers of his 
time, untouched by morbidness or eccentricity. His canny 
shrewdness and humor and his kindly heart endeared him to his 
uncultured retainers and neighbors, who were very proud of 
"Sir Walter"; his patriotic love of his native hills made him write 
and speak of Scotland with the chivalric enthusiasm of a mediae- 
val knight for his lady. He was a prodigious worker: one day 
near the end of his life he wrote copy which made sixty pages of 
print. Along with these qualities went great courage as well as 
great reticence; anything like sentimental gush he disliked; he 
did not make a display of his deeper feelings. He was the soul of 
honor. When fortune frowned upon him, he smilingly said: 
"Give me my popularity, and all my present difficulties shall be 
a joke in four years." There is no sublimer spectacle in the long 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



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course of our literary history than his cheerful struggle to pay a 
debt of honor. All these traits led Carlyle to speak of him as 
"the soundest specimen of British manhood put together in this 
eighteenth century of time." The man himself is greater than 
his books. 

The Poetry of Scott. — The principal poems of Scott appeared 
in the following order: Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805, Marmion 




ELLEN'S ISLE IN LOCH KATRINE 



in 1808, Lady of the Lake in 1810, Vision of Don Roderick in 1811, 
and Rokeby in 1813. In 1802 he had published his Minstrelsy 
of the Scottish Border, a volume of old ballads which he had for 
years been collecting; but with the Lay of the Last Minstrel his 
original work began. 

The stories of minstrels and chieftains, lords and ladies, feuds 
and border warfare in general, were familiar to Scott from his 
childhood. This rich material he now transmuted into a series 



340 



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of dashing and picturesque metrical romances, the best of the 
kind in our literature. The poems were immensely popular and 
Scotland renewed its youth in reading them. They are rapid 
narrative poems full of action, in refreshing contrast to the mild 
descriptive verse of Scott's predecessors, Cowper and Crabbe. 
They are also very different from the poetry of his own contempo- 
raries, Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley, which, as we have seen, 
is burdened with thought or touched with the melancholy of unrest 
or colored with vague and beautiful mysticism. Scott, on the 
other hand, writes of the past in a spirit of detachment from the 
present; he is not moved with a desire for reform; he does not 
expose his own emotions to public view, does not "make copy," 
as Andrew Lang remarks, "of his deepest thoughts or of his deepest 
affections," as Byron did. Out of the healthy buoyancy of a 
nature that was in love with action, Scott wrote these swift ballads 
of love and battle, delighting in heroic deeds and pleasing scenes, 
manly courage and old L fashioned womanly beauty. He was a 
minstrel and not a philosopher; hence his verse is simple and direct, 
not subtle and elaborately finished, or laden with the sense of 
mystery that half saddens modern poetry. And so when Byron's 
Childe Harold appeared in 1812, Scott with his usual frankness 
acknowledged himself beaten and turned from verse to prose. 
The truth is, he is not at his best as a poet, great as the merit of 
his verse is in brilliant narrative qualities. 

The Novels of Scott. — The year 1814 is a memorable one in 
the history of our prose fiction, for in that year Waverley, the first 
of Scott's twenty-nine novels, was published. It is hard for us 
of to-day to realize the sensation which this book caused, so sated 
are we in this age of "best sellers" and "thrillers." There had been 
historical novels of a kind before Scott, but the reading public as 
well as the critics recognized in Waverley something refreshingly 
new. This was published anonymously (public acknowledgment 
of the authorship of the Waverley Novels was not made until 
1826, when the publishing house failed) ; it was not long, however, 
before the writer's name was correctly guessed. The production 
of the Waverley Novels covers a period of sixteen or seventeen 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



341 



years (1814-1831), with an average of almost two a year — an 
astonishing performance when it is remembered how many official 
and social engagements demanded the author's attention during 
those years. Scott had written a part of Waverley some years 
before 1814 and laid the manuscript aside; he came across it one 
day when looking for his fishing tackle, and setting to work 
finished it in three weeks. This will serve to illustrate his rapidity 
of composition. The success of the venture encouraged him to 
write other stories of Scotch life and manners, and then to try 
English and continental scenes. 

Scott's novels fall naturally into three groups: — those on 
Scottish history, nine in all, such as Waverley , Guy Mannering, 
Rob Roy, and The Heart of Midlothian; those on English history, 
such as Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, Woodstock; those concerned with 
scenes on the continent, chiefly French, and in the Orient, such as 
Count Robert of Paris, Quentin Durward, and The Talisman. 
Until 1819 Scott busied himself with Scottish life and character, 
but in that year he published Ivanhoe, the first, and in many 
respects the greatest, of his romantic studies of English history. 
Ivanhoe is essentially a romance, — that is, the interest is in the 
adventures, the incidents, which, though realistically treated, 
are not reflections of ordinary life; The Heart of Midlothian, 
on the other hand, is essentially a novel, a picture of homely 
Scotch life. Ivanhoe probably continues to be the most popular 
of Scott's novels and will repay careful plot-analysis, but The 
Heart of Midlothian is the most powerful of them in intense realism 
and character interest. 

The boy or girl who reads Scott's novels makes the acquaintance 
of characters and scenes which will enrich the imagination through 
life. There is not a nobler picture gallery in our prose literature 
than this; it is next in variety and human interest to Shake- 
speare's gallery of immortals. These men and women of Scott, 
while not "true to history," are generally true to the fundamental 
qualities of human life, just as Shakespeare's characters are. His 
distinctive merit is that he peoples his books with folk whom we 
recognize as human. He did know a great deal about history, 



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especially Scottish history and legend, and is able to give his 
novels the coloring of past ages — "the pomp and circumstance 
of war," — but his power to create character is greater than his 
power to reproduce history. By putting interesting and plausible 
characters into old chronicles, he made the dry bones take on flesh 
and act like modern people, and the history part becomes alive 
to us through them. Upon the whole, Scott is more successful 
when he is depicting that homely Scotch character which he 
loved and knew directly; his men are, as a rule, more convincing 
than his women, except when the latter are Scotch women living 
close to his own time or kin to border chieftains and the like; 
his aristocratic maidens, like Rowena, are generally pale and 
conventional. 

Naturally reticent on matters of sentiment, Sir Walter is not 
notably successful with his love scenes. When the knight and the 
lady get together for the exchange of tender vows, Scott, as some- 
body has remarked, is a little nervous and gets through with the 
affair quickly or takes the reader elsewhere, leaving the lovers to 
themselves. What business has an outsider there anyhow? In 
his novels, as in his poems, he is objective: he tells his story, but 
he holds no brief for social, political, or religious reform, neither 
does he tackle any problems. In spite of such limitations as the 
modern mind may find in his work, his novels, when all has been 
said, are varied and vital records of a creative power that is nothing 
short of colossal. 

Scott's Contributions. — The distinctive contributions of Sir 
Walter Scott are these: (1) The making of a new Scotland out 
of the old. Since his day Scotland has taken on a fresh interest 
for student and .artist and traveler. With his enchanter's wand 
this ' 'Wizard of the North" evoked from the musty past a land of 
romance. (2) A quickened impulse to historical study. Scott 
vitalized history and taught others how to write it with greater 
regard for the human element. He helped to socialize facts. 
(3) An enlargement of the scope of fiction. All sorts of characters 
and a variety of nationalities appear in his novels, covering six 
or seven centuries of the epic or heroic side of legend and history. 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



343 



The range of Scott's novels is the greatest in our literature of fiction, 
(4) The creation of the historical novel. Attempts at writing 
this species of prose fiction before Scott — as, for example, in Jane 
Porter's Scottish Chiefs — are pale and ineffectual. Following him 
there arose a host of writers of historical romances. "From Scott 
nearly all the successful historical novelists since his time have 
learned their craft." 1 (5) Harmony between background, action, 
and character. This is called "local color.'' For the first time in 
the history of the novel the setting became an integral and indis- 
pensable part of the story. 

THE ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS 

Rise of Magazine Literature. — During the first quarter of the 

nineteenth century the modern magazine was founded and from 
that day to this has proved an important factor in English litera- 
ture. The Edinburgh Review was established in 1802, the Quarterly 
in 1809, Blackwood's Magazine in 1817; following these were the 
Westminster Review, the London Magazine, Fraser's Magazine, 
and others. The reviewing of new books was the regular occupa- 
tion of the originators of the earlier periodicals, while a little later, 
contributions in the form of literary essays formed the staple 
of the magazines. Thus literary criticism became an established 
art. 

The most celebrated of the reviewers was Francis Jeffrey 
(1778-1850), originator and for years editor of the Edinburgh 
Review. Jeffrey was by nature a conservative, steadfastly opposed 
to the romanticists, and along with Gifford, editor of the Quar- 
terly, reviewed the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge in a tone 
of caustic irony, and that of Keats with bitter ridicule. These 
critics belonged to the old school which followed Pope and the 
"classic rules," and though intellectually clever, they were incap- 
able of reading the signs of the times which indicated the triumph 
of a newer order of poetry. Among the editors of the day were 



K^ross: Development of the English Novel, p. 134. 



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ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Scott's son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854), now re- 
membered by his delightful Life of Scott, one of the best biographies 
in our literature, and by his interesting Life of Burns; and John 
Wilson (1785-1854) (' 'Christopher North"), author of Nodes 
Ambrosianae, charming reminiscences of his literary friends, 
among whom were Wordsworth and De Quincey. The magazines, 
under the direction of men of taste and critical ability, soon came 
to have a decided influence on literature. All the great essayists 
wrote for them, and, as we shall see a little later, some of the 
standard novels first appeared as serials in magazines. 

The New Appreciative Criticism. — Up to this time literary 
criticism in England had been more or less dominated by the 
"classic rules" or by dogmatic personal opinions. Whenever 
the dictates of common sense, colored by the enthusiasm of indi- 
vidual preference, prevailed, — as, for instance, in the critical 
essays of Dryden, or in certain of Addison and Johnson, — the 
reader would get a clearer understanding of the man and work 
discussed. For the most part, however, critics went on pronounc- 
ing a poet or prose writer "guilty" if he did not observe certain 
laws which, in the critic's opinion, were infallible because estab- 
lished by the ancients or fixed by custom. This was Pope's 
method, and to a less degree, Johnson's and Jeffrey's. These 
critics, with all their mental acuteness, did not, as a rule, study 
a poem from the inside by patiently trying to find out what the 
author himself had attempted to do. Now the key which unlocks 
the door to an author's work is sympathy. "Not to sympathize 
is not to understand," said De Quincey, and in that dictum he 
implies the cardinal principle of the new appreciative criticism 
which began about this time. That is the modern method of 
criticism: a sympathetic study of a piece of literature for the pur- 
pose of getting the writer's point of view, and in the light of his 
intention to estimate his performance. The leaders in this appre- 
ciative or sympathetic criticism — which is a part of the prose 
literature of Romanticism — are Lamb, De Quincey, Coleridge, 
Hazlitt, and Hunt. 



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345 



CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834) 

His Life. — Charles Lamb, essayist and letter writer, spent his life of 
almost sixty years in and about London. He was born in 1775 in the pre- 
cincts of the Temple — that rambling old building of lawyers' offices and 
lodgings, — the son of John Lamb, a lawyer's clerk in the Middle Temple, 
whose characteristics are set forth in one of his son's essays. Charles was 
sent at seven years of age to Christ's Hospital School through the influence 
of his father's employer, and there he met Coleridge and Leigh Hunt. Here 
Lamb remained for seven years, aquiring a good knowledge of Latin and 
less of Greek and reading such old English authors as he could get his hands 
on. From school he went at fourteen to become a clerk in the South Sea 
House, as it was necessary for him to help support the family. A few years 
later, in 1792, he was given a clerkship in the East India House, — the Lon- 
don headquarters of a great trading company — and in that position of daily 
grind Lamb spent the next thirty-three years. 

In 1796 a tragedy befell the Lamb family, which darkened their lives for 
years. Charles's sister Mary, ten years his senior, to whom he was deeply 
attached, killed her mother in a fit of insanity. This dread malady was 
inherited, as Charles himself at one time suffered a brief attack. Mary 
was confined in a hospital for the insane, and under skilful treatment she 
recovered; but the rest of her long life she was subject to attacks of mad- 
ness. The father was old and childish; for him and the afflicted sister 
Charles Lamb tenderly cared, devoting himself uncomplainingly to their 
comfort. Still the household was not a gloomy one: Lamb's genial humor 
enlivened the little circle, and Mary herself was a congenial companion; 
Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, and other friends were frequent visitors, 
and many were the rare evenings of high talk they had together. Mean- 
while, Lamb had written some poetry, and gradually entered upon his voca- 
tion of authorship, giving out from time to time his chatty essays. Then 
he and his sister, as the result of reading in the Elizabethan dramatists, 
wrote together the Tales from Shakespeare, and Lamb published with 
comments selections from the dramatists. His writings brought him 
public recognition and some money, though essays of such delicate flavor 
never appeal to a very large circle. 

In 1825 Lamb's employers at the East India House granted him a pen- 
sion of £441 ($2,200) a year for his long and faithful service, and he retired. 
Used to a daily routine of clerical work, he really missed his uncongenial 
task and found himself sometimes wandering back to the desk; his humorous 
account of his feelings may be found in the Elia sketch, "The Superannuated 
Man." These later years, saddened by Mary's malady and Charles's failing 
health, were spent at Enfield and Edmonton near London. The end came 



346 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



in 1834, and Lamb was buried in the churchyard at Edmonton. Mary Lamb 
survived her brother thirteen years. 

His Personality.— To know Lamb the man one must read his 
essays and letters, for his lovable personality is gently diffused 
throughout his writings. Next to these one should read what his 
friends say about him, such as Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, 
Hazlitt, Crabbe, Robinson. Few men have had warmer friends, 
and about few men has a string of more delightful anecdotes 
come down to us. 1 Lamb declared that he 1 'herded always, 
while it was possible, with younger people than himself. * * * * The 
impressions of infancy had burnt into him, and he resented the 
impertinence of manhood." His habit of stuttering gave his 
talk, bright and whimsically humorous when he was at his best, 
a touch of drollery. Coleridge, whose long monologues sometimes 
wearied his hearers, once said to Lamb: "Charles, I think you 
have heard me preach?" "I n-n-never heard you do anything 
else," answered Lamb. It was Coleridge whom Lamb once called 
"an archangel slightly damaged." Naturally sensitive and shy, 
he was at his ease only in the congenial company of friends. No 
doubt there was a suggestion of quaintness about Lamb's appear- 
ance as there is about his writings and literary likings: he was 
fond of old-fashioned styles in dress and of old books and old 
china; when a new book came out he said he read an old one. 
His playful humor is often touched with gentle pathos. That was 
the man's life — an alternation of sunshine and shadow; something 
of the child, much of the philosopher. 

His Works. — Lamb's first writings were poems and plays, but 
he was really neither a poet nor a dramatist, and the only poem 
of his still widely read is "The Old Familiar Faces," which is full 
of tender sentiment. In 1807, the Tales from Shakespeare ap- 
peared, the stories of Shakespeare's plays told in simple, pleasing 
style. It is the joint work of Charles and Mary Lamb: he under- 
took the tragedies and she the comedies, a fitting and considerate 

x See the Life of Charles Lamb, by E. V. Lucas, for a rich collection 
of these anecdotes. 



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347 



division in view of Mary Lamb's tendency to melancholy. The 
next year Lamb published Specimens of English Dramatic Poets 
Contemporary with Shakespeare, which gave him wide reputation 
as a literary critic. He was a lover of the Elizabethan drama, 
having read it for years with sympathetic delight and discrim- 
inating insight. The selection of "purple patches'' is the most 
satisfactory yet made, though our taste of to-day leads us to 
prefer whole plays in a collection rather than excerpts. Not, 
however, until the appearance of his Essays of Elia 1 in the London 
Magazine, beginning in 1820, did Lamb find his true vein. 

The Essays of Elia came out one a month for several years, 
and were then collected in a volume. They are essays of the per- 
sonal type, informal, rambling, chatty, on a variety of subjects 
rather whimsically chosen. A few of these well-known papers 
are: "A Dissertation upon Roast Pig," "The Praise of Chimney- 
sweepers," "Old China," "The South Sea House," "Christ's 
Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago," "My Relations," "A 
Chapter on Ears," "All-Fools' Day," "Dream Children," "The 
Superannuated Man." Some of them are quite personal: Lamb's 
own experiences, though limited to London, were rich in material 
for his delicate imagination and playful humor; and besides, he 
was deeply read in the older prose like Burton's Anatomy of Melan- 
choly and Brown's Religio Medici and Urn Burial, to say nothing 
of the Elizabethan dramatists — works of mellow style and antique 
flavor. Moreover, Lamb knew London street-life as no one else 
since Johnson, and he loved it as did the old Fleet-street autocrat, 
but with a keener eye for oddities of character. Then, too, — and 
here the social aspect of Johnson's day is suggested, — Lamb was 
part of a large fellowship of literary men, some of whom were 
just respectable Bohemians. 

These loose, familiar essays are both like and unlike the Tatler 
and Spectator papers of Steele and Addison a hundred years before. 
Lamb's humor, quaintly delicate and delicious, is more subtly 

l Elia was the name of a clerk in the South Sea House, adopted in jest by 
Lamb. 



348 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



pervasive than the somewhat formal fun of Addison and the 
joviality of Steele. There is neither irony nor cynicism in Lamb, 
but there is what Hazlitt called "witty melancholy." We see 
things through the eyes of this gentle talker and inwardly laugh 
at the play of his old-fashioned fancy. Hardly less fascinating 
are Lamb's Letters, informal outpourings of his opinions on people, 
books, and things in general, but none so interesting as the writer 
himself. Critic, essayist, letter writer; perfecter of the personal 
essay begun by Steele and Addison; portrayer of the inner life 
and interpreter of moods, — such is Charles Lamb, the "gentle 
Elia," whose delightful essays should be read for pure pleasure 
with sympathies all alive. 

THOMAS DE QUINCEY (1775-1859) 

His Life. — Thomas De Quincey, dreamer and critic, friend of Charles 
Lamb and associate of the "Lake Poets," was born in Manchester in 1775, 
the son of a merchant. Shortly after his birth the family moved into the 
country, and in 1791 to Greenhay; De Quincey's boyhood was thus spent 
amid rural scenes, where his shy, imaginative temperament was stimulated 
by lonely reveries. After attending a local school for a while, he was 
sent to Bath Grammar School. Here he was a brilliant student, showing 
wonderful proficiency in Greek especially. "At thirteen," he says in the 
Confessions of an Opium-Eater, "I wrote Greek with ease, and at fifteen 
my command of that language was so great, that I not only composed Greek 
verses in lyric metres, but would converse in Greek fluently, and without 
embarrassment * * * * 'That boy' said one of my masters, * * * * 'could 
harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English 
one.' " 

After a trip to Ireland, De Quincey was sent to the Manchester Grammar 
School: but having conceived a violent dislike for the school, he determined 
to escape from the tyranny of the teachers and the brutality of the boys, 
which he had endured for a year. He accordingly ran away to Wales where 
for months he rambled about, sleeping out of doors, managing to live on a 
small allowance from his mother. From Wales he went to London, and 
there he led that strange Bohemian life so vividly related in the Confessions. 

This vagabond experience in the streets of London, where he wandered 
at will and dreamed, came later to be regarded by De Quincey as a sort of 
initiation into the mysteries of human sorrow about which he afterward 
wrote in a spirit of solemn exaltation. By this time, 1803, his friends and 
relatives decided to send him to Oxford. There he entered Worcester 



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349 



College, and soon was known as "a quiet and studious man." At Oxford 
De Quincey became addicted to the opium habit, which was the cause of 
both joy and sorrow, fame and failure. The drug was at first taken to 
relieve neuralgia; the habit gradually grew upon him until at the end of 
ten years he was taking daily from eight to twelve thousand drops of 
laudanum. Happily, by a steady reduction of the amount he finally succeed- 
ed in almost freeing himself from the use of the drug. Leaving the Uni- 
versity in 1808, he journeyed to the Lake District. Here he met the Words- 
worths, and the next year, 1809, moved into Dove Cottage at Grasmere, 
succeeding Wordsworth, and spent many years there. 

De Quincey's Grasmere period extended from 1809 to 1830. During this 
time, however, he spent three or four years in London, where he began his 
career as an author by contributing to the magazines. For the next thirty 
years he turned out a great variety of literature, writing more steadily for 
the magazines than any other man of his time not editorially connected 
with them. He married in 1816. During these years he made the acquaint- 
ance of every literary man worth knowing in England and Scotland. In 
1830 he moved with his family to Edinburgh. His wife died in 1837, and 
De Quincey was left in charge of his small children, his two older sons having 
died several years before. He was never able to keep money, spending it 
lavishly or giving it away to friends or beggars. Without practical ability, 
he would with the utmost gentleness do the most surprising things. For 
instance, he was at one time paying rent for four or five different lodgings 
in Edinburgh: as his manuscripts and books accumulated in one house, 
he would, rather than disturb them, go out and rent other quarters, stay 
until they likewise filled up with books and papers, then move to others, 
and so on. In 1840 the family rented a cottage at Lasswade, near Edin- 
burgh, and there De Quincey spent the rest of his life, except the last few 
years when he had lodgings in the city. He died in 1859 and was buried in 
the West Churchyard, Edinburgh. 

His Personality. — Carlyle's vivid description of De Quincey is 
well-known: "You would have taken him, by candlelight, for 
the beautifullest little child; blue-eyed, blonde-haired, sparkling 
face — had there not been something, too, which said 'Eccovi, 
this Child has been in Hell.' " Shy and fond of solitude, he was a 
great walker, and while he lived at Grasmere might be seen at 
any hour of the night flitting about over the hills, ghostlike, as 
the neighbors thought. And this shy and absent-minded man, 
once started, was a great and entertaining talker in the cultured 
circles of London and Edinburgh, and also a good listener, which 



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Coleridge was not. De Quincey was noted for his absent-minded- 
ness: he forgot his engagements, set things on fire with his mis- 
placed candle, or singed his own hair over the lamp; then calmly 
extinguished his burning locks by rubbing his hands over them 
without interrupting his reading. If you would, get him to keep an 
appointment you must send for him. "He would promise," says 
Masson, — "promise most punctually, * * * * and reassure you 
with a dissertation on the beauty of punctuality; but when the time 
came and you were all met, a hundred to one you were without 
your De Quincey." Dreamer as he was and for so much of the time 
lost in rapt reverie, he had a keen sense of humor, while the pa- 
thetic experiences of his own life made him sympathetic. He loved 
children and wrote beautifully about them; he was generous, 
resembling Goldsmith in his charity; and he had the will power to 
break away from an insidious habit, which weakened his powers 
while it caused him agonies mingled with immortal dreams. 

His Works. — De Quincey wrote autobiography, essays, and 
sketches, voluminous and varied, most of them originally for the 
magazines. His first work of importance, Confessions of an Opium- 
Eater (1821), is in many respects the most representative. This 
little book is a record in silvery prose of his childhood, his wander- 
ings, and his sensations when under the influence of opium. The . 
pains of opium as well as the delights are dwelt upon in language 
of irresistible charm. It must not be assumed, however, that ; 
De Quincey's gorgeous word-painting is entirely due to opium- 
dreams; he was from a child a seer of visions, endowed with a 
highly sensitized soul, and his imagination, without the stimulus \ 
of opium, was gorgeously creative. 

The other works of De Quincey most worthy of reading and 
careful study — for he must be studied if his power is to be felt — 
are: Autobiographic Sketches, an account of his childish emotions 
and experiences; Flight of a Tartar Tribe, one of his best pieces 
of narrative- writing; Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, 
abounding in fantastic humor; The English Mailcoach, Joan of 
Arc, Vision of Sudden Death, The Knocking at the Gate in Mac- 
beth, Suspiria de Profundis. The "Dream-fugue," from The 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



351 



English Mailcoach, and "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrows," 
from Suspiria de Profundis, are among the highest reaches of 
impassioned musical prose in our language. De Quincey's style 
is the result of a piling up of long cadenced sentences with the 
cumulative effect of great billows, but more subtly harmonious, 
suggestive of solemn cathedral music. He had for grand word- 
melody a genius unsurpassed in English literature. His more 
stately, richly modulated prose reminds one of the long periods 
of Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, and John Milton. 

Three characteristics impress one who reads much from De 
Quincey, — the wide range of his knowledge, his great imaginative 
power, and his diffuseness. He wrote essays on theology, political 
economy, logic, German metaphysics, and rhetoric, and he did it 
well, though they are little read. He was related to Coleridge 
in his interest in German philosophy and in his remarkable con- 
versational gift on abstract themes, and to Macaulay, his successor, 
in mental curiosity and range of knowledge. By his poetic 
imagination he is a thorough Romanticist, as well as through his 
sympathetic method in literary criticism. He is a critic of remark- 
able insight, as his reminiscences of the "Lake Poets" and his 
essay on style prove. His one great fault is diffuseness. He had 
a discursive mind, and he likes to wander off from the main theme 
on long excursions, much to the annoyance of the impatient 
reader. De Quincey lived on into the Victorian Era and is a link 
between the Romanticists and the Victorians. His long and elabo- 
rate essays prepared the way for Macaulay, Carlyle, and Ruskin. 

Hazlitt and Hunt. — Among the leaders in the new appreciative 
criticism along with Lamb and De Quincey were William Hazlitt 
and Leigh Hunt. 

William Hazlitt (1778-1830), son of a Unitarian minister at 
Maidstone, is one of the most accomplished and versatile writers 
of this period. Art critic, reporter, political and philosophical 
essayist (greatly influenced by Coleridge), and contributor to 
the reviews, Hazlitt has left a small library of critical writing. 
The best of his works are the three courses of lectures — On the 
English Poets, On the English Comic Writers, On the Dramati 



352 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Literature of the Age of Queen Elizabeth, — and Characters of Shake- 
speare's Plays. His Tabletalk is an interesting volume of personal 
impressions about his contemporaries. He asserted that " a genu- 
ine criticism should reflect the colour, the light and shade, and the 
soul and body of a work." His infirmities of temper led him into 
frequent quarrels, and his life was neither a happy nor an admirable 
one; but in the domain of the rambling personal essay, suggestive 
and impressionistic, rather than exhaustive, he ranks high. He 
was able to reproduce the flavor of an old book or a past age with 
singular felicity, and at his best, — for instance, in the essay on 
"Reading Old Books' ' — he is altogether delightful. 

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), essayist and poet, was at Christ's 
Hospital School with Lamb, and with him and most of the other 
Romantic writers kept up a lifelong friendship. He has already 
been mentioned in connection with Byron, Shelley, and Keats. 
Hunt wrote a great deal of poetry, though only one short piece, 
"Abou Ben Adhem," is generally read now. It is as editor and 
essayist that Hunt demands a place in a brief history of English 
literature. He began as editor of the Examiner, a weekly paper, 
in 1808, and was for most of his life connected with some periodical. 
His contributions to these periodicals contain excellent bits of 
appreciative criticism, — as, for instance, his What is Poetry? — and 
he did much to popularize standard literature. Both Hunt and 
Hazlitt were, like the other romanticists, fond of the Elizabethans 
and helped to revive an interest in "poets dead and gone." 

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)— One of the most accom- 
plished prose writers of the nineteenth century is Walter Savage 
Landor, born at Warwick, educated at Rugby and Oxford. His 
long life was checkered with quarrels, escapades, extravagances, 
due to his high temper and strong prejudices. He managed to 
spend a large fortune, and then had to turn to his relatives for 
aid, his two brothers finally giving him an allowance if he would 
remain in Italy. Much of his life was spent there, indeed, and he 
is buried in Florence not far from Mrs. Browning. The Brownings 
were kind and generous to the old man, whose revolutionary 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 353 



spirit early manifested itself and continued to burst forth through- 
out his life. 

Landor began his literary career by writing Gebir, an extrava- 
gantly romantic poem published in 1798. This performance has 
long ago ceased to interest anybody except the literary specialist. 
The work of Landor which has kept his name from oblivion is 
the Imaginary Conversations in six volumes. Reacting from 
Romanticism, Landor went back in imagination to Athens and 
Rome, and bringing celebrated characters face to face recorded 
their imaginary conversations. Thus, Diogenes and Plato talk 
philosophy, Hannibal and Marcellus discuss military tactics, 
Aspasia writes of her talks with Pericles. Coming down to 
mediaeval and modern times, Landor reports conversations 
between Dante and Beatrice, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and 
other notable personages. He wrote the Imaginary Conversa- 
tions in Italy under the spell of classic history and literature. 
The style is polished and restrained, and catches from the sub- 
ject matter something of classic coldness. Landor lived far into 
the new era now to be considered, and saw the glory of the great 
Victorians. 




GRAVE OF WORDSWORTH 



354 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 
THE PERIOD IN OUTLINE (1798-1837) 



LITERATURE 

I. The Poets 

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): 

Reflective and Lyric Poetry 
Publication of the Lyrical Ballads, 
1798 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Roman- 
tic Ballads, Criticisms 

George Gordon Byron: Narrative, 
Lyric, Dramas, Satires 

Publication of Childe Harold, 1812 

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Adonais, 
Prometheus, etc. 

John Keats : Endymion, Hyperion, 
Eve of St. Agnes, Odes 

II. The Novelists 

Anne Radcliffe: "Gothic" Ro- 
mances 

Maria Edgeworth: Novels on Ire- 
land 

Jane Austen: Realistic Novels — 

Pride and Prejudice, etc. 
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): 

Poems and twenty-nine novels 
(three groups) 
Publication of Waverley, 1814 

III. The Essayists and 
Critics 

Charles Lamb: Essays of Elia 
Thomas DeQuincey (1775-1859) : 

Opium-Eater, Joan of Arc, Tar- 
tar Tribe, etc. 
Hazlitt and Hunt 

Walter Savage Landor: Imaginary 
Conversations 



HISTORY 
Reign of George IV, 1820-30 

Reign of William IV, 1830-37 

Union of Ireland with Great Brit- 
ain, 1800 

Battle of Trafalgar (Death of Nel- 
son), 1805 

Slave Trade Abolished, 1807 

War with the United States, 1812- 
1814 

Battle of Waterloo, 1815 

First Atlantic Steamship, 1819 

Catholic Emancipation Bill, 1829 

First Railroad, 1830 

Reform Bill (Electoral), 1832 

Slavery Abolished, 1833 



Triumph of Romanticism; A Great Creative Age; Revolution and Reform. 



THE TRIUMPH OF ROMANTICISM 



355 



SOME USEFUL BOOKS 

Historical. — Hassall's Making of the British Empire, Cheyney's Indus- 
trial and Social History of England, Warner's Landmarks of English In- 
dustrial History, Macaulay's essay on William Pitt. 

Literary. — Beers's English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century 
(Holt), Symons' The Romantic Movement in English Poetry, Hancock's 
The French Revolution and the English Poets (University of Chicago 
Press), Herford's The Age of Wordsworth (Macmillan), Saintsbury's Nine- 
teenth Century Literature, Lives of principal writers in English Men of 
Letters Series. 

Selections and even complete works of the writers of the period are easily 
accessible in annotated editions and in "Everyman's Library." 

Among critical and appreciative essays on the poets and essayists are. 
Shairp's Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, M. Arnold's Essays in Criti- 
cism (second series), Hutton's Literary Essays, Pater's Appreciations, 
Lowell's Among My Books, Woodberry's Makers of Literature, Fields' 
Yesterdays with Authors, Bagehot's Literary Studies, Stephen's Hours in 
a Library, Dowden's Studies in Literature. 

The Cambridge edition of the poets (Houghton) is recommended- 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 
1837-1910 
The Age of Democracy and Science 

The Spread of Democracy, Political and Social. — Victoria came 
to the throne in 1837; five years before that an important bill, 
already mentioned, had been passed by Parliament granting to 
the great middle class the right to vote. This was the beginning 
of widespread political and social reform, and by 1884 the fran- 
chise had been given to the working classes. England had at last 
become a real democracy and Parliament a thoroughly represen- 
tative body. Little England had, moreover, become imperial 
through her great system of colonial federation and her ever- 
growing commerce with the far East, expanding into the powerful 
British Empire of to-day. This empire-building had been going 
on steadily since the middle of the eighteenth century until 
England, in addition to her North American possessions, came to 
own India, Australia, and parts of Africa, besides many islands. 
Along with territorial expansion has gone wonderful internal 
development, for the welfare and happiness of the middle and 
working classes has occupied the thought and energies of the 
nation's greatest statesmen. Various kinds of social reform 
have been successfully carried out, such as the prevention of child 
labor in factories, a shorter working day, improved agricultural 
conditions, better homes for workingmen, sanitation, pure food, 
and the settlement of disputes by arbitration. 

The age has been marked by social unrest following an insistent 
demand for social justice ba?ed on the democratic principle of 
equal opportunity for all men. It has been a time of complex so- 
cial and economic problems and experiments, attempts at working 

[356] 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



357 



out the visions and dreams of the Age of Romanticism for the 
practical good of man. The individualism of that period has 
become socialized, while the somewhat vague idealism of earlier 
reformers is expressing itself in more concrete ways. The pros- 
perity of the middle classes, the improvement in the mechanical 
arts, and the growth of commerce, caused during the earlier years 
of the Victorian Era an absorption in material concerns against 
which essayists, novelists, and poets cried out in tones of impas- 
sioned protest. With the greater ease of living, however, came 
more leisure for reading and with the growth of modern democ- 
racy a remarkable advance in popular education. The union of 
the ideal and the practical is more strikingly exemplified in this 
age than in any other period of English literature; and though the 
Victorians lack the fresh joyousness of the Elizabethans, they 
have deeper and more varied interests than the men and women 
of the older time. 

Growth of the Scientific Spirit. — Progress in natural science 
has wrought a change in man's conception of the universe and 
profoundly influenced literature and history. In the realm of 
applied science steam and electricity may be said to have changed 
the face of civilization since 1837, while the new art of aviation 
opens to the intellectually, curious a field of wonder. Railroads, 
steamships, telegraphs, telephones bind the world together in a 
great social community, or annihilate space and time; mechanical 
inventions of endless variety add to the comfort of life and bring 
increased respect for the ingenuity of the human mind. The scien- 
tific imagination is regnant; inventions follow each other so fast 
that nothing seems impossible in an age crowded with the marvels 
of discovery. 

Still more startling have been the revelations of biology, or the 
science of life. Darwin's Origin of Species appeared in 1859, 
setting forth the theory of evolution, and since then every depart- 
ment of human thought has felt the influence of this epoch-making 
book. The intellectual and spiritual unrest which followed un- 
settled and saddened many to whom the new doctrine of evolution 
seemed destructive of the older philosophic and religious beliefs. 



358 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



The readjustment to the new order proved, as usual, a more or 
less painful process. The idea of relativity, development, growth, 
became for the first time fundamental in men's thinking. Not 
only science, but literature as well, has felt profoundly the effect 
of this idea, while historical research has ever since been carried 
on in the scientific spirit. The arriving at a conclusion only after 
patient examination and comparison of the material at hand, 
only after careful experiment, is the modern scientific method 
which has transformed the modern world and fulfilled the dreams 
of Bacon, the father of inductive reasoning. Out of this method 
have grown the innumerable laboratories which have so largely 
contributed both to the enlightenment and the happiness of our 
time. 

An Age of Practical Idealism. — No other era can show so many 
earnest, disinterested seekers after truth, or so many practical 
idealists. The childlike gladness, the fresh energy, the serene 
assurance of preceding ages, the Victorians have not; life has be- 
come more serious, more complex, and the human consciousness 
is burdened with a deepening sense of mystery in the presence of 
great spiritual and social problems. The literature of the latter 
half of the nineteenth century reflects this spiritual and social 
unrest in all its forms: we find the poetry of doubt and disillusion, 
the poetry of courage and faith, the novel of moral purpose, 
the problem-drama. Literature becomes more purposeful, more 
thought-laden, as the straggle for existence in the modern city 
grows more strenuous. Motives are analyzed, the palpitating 
heart laid bare, the secrets of individual personality ruthlessly 
revealed for the gratification of an almost morbid curiosity. 
Literature has come closer to life, but the realism of our greatest 
prose is happily touched with redeeming idealism. Thus, in spite 
of its introspective character, Victorian literature is in general 
hopeful and constructive, while as compared with that of other 
periods it is essentially democratic, deeply representative of all 
sorts and conditions of men. 

Variety of Victorian Literature. Predominance of the Novel. — 
The range of literature in this period of inventions and discoveries 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



359 



has immensely broadened. A bewildering variety of subject 
matter — social, political, aesthetic, industrial, scientific, religious, 
philosophic — is to be found in the essayists and novelists. Prose 
is the prevailing form of literary expression, though the Victorian 
Era has given to the world two poets of the first rank, besides a 
number of minor singers. The essay has expanded from a brief, 
suggestive sketch of a subject into a more or less formal treatise, 
as illustrated in Macaulay. The great histories of the period are 
written in such an attractive style that one may regard them as 
contributions to literature; the same is true of many works on 
science and philosophy, such as those of Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, 
and Spencer. Magazines and newspapers have multiplied enor- 
mously in response to the demands of the great busy masses who 
have neither the leisure nor the culture which the reading of 
standard literature requires. It is an age in which everybody 
reads. The reading matter may be good, bad, or indifferent — the 
informing essay, the sane and wholesome novel, the high-class 
magazine, the sensational story, the "yellow" journal. Above 
all else the Victorian is the age of prose fiction: the novel and 
the short story are as predominant as was the drama in the Eliz- 
abethan Age. A pleasing, flexible, and serviceable prose style 
has gradually developed out of the more formal and polished 
prose of the eighteenth century. Later English prose has gained 
in directness, energy, and adaptability since the reign of the novel 
and the magazine began, though it has lost something in dis- 
tinction and refinement. The influence of review writing and 
editorial writing gave rise to what may be called "journalistic 
prose," an admirable example of which is to be found in the essays 
of Macaulay. Victorian writers may be divided into three great 
classes — the Essayists, the Poets, the Novelists. 

I. THE ESSAYISTS 

The greater essayists of this period are Macaulay, Carlyle, 
Ruskin, and Arnold; other prominent essayists are Newman, 
Stevenson, Pater, and the scientist Huxley, the philosopher 



360 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Spencer, and the historian Froude. These two groups of essay 
writers, while by no means including all who wrote with distinc- 
tion that form of literature, are thoroughly representative. Atten- 
tion has already been called to the various kinds of essays which 
have appeared in English literature — the wisdom, or proverb-like, 
essay of Bacon, the personal and appreciative essay of Addison, 
Lamb, and De Quincey, the critical essay of Dryden and Johnson. 
In Macaulay we find one of the most brilliant critical essayists 
of our literature. 

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859) 

His Life. — Thomas B. Macaulay, man of affairs, essayist and historian, 
was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, in 1800, son of Zachary Mac- 
aulay, a man of means who spent part of his life in the government service. 
The elder Macaulay was of Scotch descent and of somewhat stern temper; 
his wife belonged to a prominent Quaker family of Bristol, and to her the 
young Macaulay owed something of his brilliant wit. Macaulay spent 
most of his life in London; like Johnson, he knew the city well and loved 
it devotedly, caring little for the country. He was a precocious child, 
reading standard books when a few years old and talking like a man. Asked 
by a lady one day how he felt, the three-year old philosopher, upon whose 
legs a servant had spilled hot coffee that morning, replied: "Thank you, 
madam, the agony is abated." Before he was eight Macaulay was writing 
a Universal History, besides poems on various historical and legendary 
subjects. From his childhood he was an omnivorous reader. At Cam- 
bridge, where he had entered Trinity College in 1818, Macaulay was a bril- 
liant student and forceful debater, noted for his proficiency in the classics. 
After leaving Cambridge, where he had remained for some years after 
graduation on a fellowship, he studied law, and was called to the bar in 1826. 
Before this, however, Macaulay had begun writing for the magazines; in 
1825 his now famous Essay on Milton appeared in the Edinburgh Review, 
and this brought him widespread recognition. More and more he gave him- 
self to writing, though he continued to study the science of politics, with 
the result that in 1830 he was elected to the House of Commons. Here he 
proved himself a successful orator and debater on the Whig side. In 1834 
he was appointed a member of the Supreme Council of India, whither he 
went with his favorite sister Hannah. Macaulay spent four years in India. 

After returning to England in 1838 he spent a while in Italy; he then came 
back home, was again elected to Parliament, and later was made a member 
of the Cabinet. For years Macaulay had been planning and working on a 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



361 



history of England, and his increasing interest in this great undertaking 
led him to retire from active political life. He had, of course, long been 
one of the best known literary men of England, one of that celebrated Lon- 
don group of authors who were making Victorian prose glorious. He had 
never married, preferring to give himself to the companionship of his sisters 
and their families and of his beloved books. His home life was a happy 
one, while no important literary social gathering in London was complete 
without the brilliant conversation of Macaulay. In 1857 he was made a 
baron by Queen Victoria and was henceforth Lord Macaulay. Two years 
later he died and was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. 




GREAT COURT OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 



His Personality. — Macaulay was an upright, manly, energetic 
sort of man, of great industry and ability. He liked the world 
in which he found himself and was not deeply concerned about 
greatly changing it; he enjoyed life, was devoted to his kin and they 
to him, and thought the British government quite admirable as 
long as the Whigs had control. He had great practical sense, and, 
with all his gifts of mind and his remarkable knowledge, the point 
of view of the average man. Macaulay had a phenomenal memory, 
being able to retain and instantly to recall whole chapters, cantos, 
and even, it is said, entire volumes of prose and poetry. He read 
with amazing rapidity, taking in a page in a few seconds and being 
able years afterwards to repeat the substance of it; he had the rep- 



362 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



utation of never forgetting what he read. Much of the Bible, Para- 
Vise Lost, and Pilgrim's Progress he said he could repeat verbatim. 
The lists of books read by him in a year, as given by his nephew, 
— many of them in Greek and Latin, some in the modern foreign 
tongues, — seem almost incredible. Macaulay was a wonderful 
talker, so full was his mind, so ready and so accurate his knowl- 
edge. 

His Works and Literary Characteristics. — Macaulay wrote 
several volumes of essays, a few poems, and a History of England. 
The essays were originally contributed to Knight's Quarterly 
Review, the Edinburgh Review, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
those for the encyclopaedia being more strictly biographical 
than the others. Macaulay began writing for Knight's Quarterly 
in 1823, but with the appearance of his Essay on Milton, in 
the Edinburgh Review in 1825, his fame was first established, and 
after that time most of his essays were contributed to that cele- 
brated periodical. The essays are critical and historical, dealing 
with literary and political leaders and their times. Most of them 
were written as reviews of new books on old subjects; the appear- 
ance of such and such a work furnishes Macaulay an occasion for 
expressing his opinions on this or that writer or statesman; the 
essay grows into a treatise, and when the critic has finished there 
is little more to be said. Macaulay was a busy man of affairs 
and wrote these essays in such leisure hours as he could command, 
many of them being composed between five and eight o'clock 
in the morning. They cover a wide range of subjects, introduc- 
ing the reader to a wealth of historical and literary details, refer- 
ences, and allusions, poured forth in wonderful profusion. On the 
shining river of his clear and dashing style we are borne along 
through old lands and cities lighted up by his vivid historical 
imagination and graphic narrative and descriptive powers. John- 
son, Addison, Bacon, Milton, Goldsmith, Bunyan, Byron, Pitt, 
Warren Hastings, Walpole, Mirabeau, Machiavelli, and the rest, 
live again and act their parts before us. 

The work on which Macaulay bestowed most pains, however, 
is the History of England, his masterpiece, which he left unfinished 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



363 



after years of writing. This work was to cover the years from 
1685 to about 1830, — that is, from the accession of James II to 
that of William IV — but the five volumes completed include 
only fifteen or sixteen years. Macaulay's avowed purpose was 
to make history interesting, and he succeeded as no other historian 
has done. Writing in 1841 to his friend Napier, Macaulay had 
declared: "I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something 
which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel 
on the tables of young ladies." This really happened: the first 
two volumes appeared in 1849 and proved to be "best sellers," a 
second edition being necessary in ten days. The work was even 
more popular in the United States, where within a few months 
two hundred thousand copies were sold; his American publishers 
wrote: "No work of any kind has ever so completely taken our 
whole country by storm." 

The causes of this unprecedented popularity for a history are 
not far to seek: Macaulay had, in the first place, a vast fund of 
accurate and ready knowledge; in the second place, an imagina- 
tion which enabled him graphically to reconstruct the past; and 
third, a brilliant journalistic style. He made the facts of his nar- 
rative luminous with picturesque description, so that "the average 
man" could follow him. At a great mass-meeting in one of the 
northern counties of England, not long after the history was pub- 
lished, "one of the audience rose and moved, in north-country 
fashion, a vote of thanks to Mr. Macaulay "for having written a 
history which workingmen can understand." 1 Perhaps the most 
brilliant chapter in this work is the famous third chapter of 
volume one, depicting the social England of the last years of the 
/ seventeenth century. Macaulay was no profound interpreter of 
history, but in the important matters of marshalling the facts and 
re-creating past ages so that history becomes at once vivid and 
interesting, he has never been surpassed. 

Macaulay is the author of several popular poems dealing with 
the heroic traditions of old Roman life. These poems, known col- 
lectively as the Lays of Ancient Rome and published in 1842, are 



1 Trevelyan: Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II, Chap. 12. 



364 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



really martial ballads full of fire and movement. "Virginius" and 
"Horatius at the Bridge" have been deservedly popular for genera- 
tions with young readers, to whom the courage and patriotism 
of the Roman heroes make a stirring appeal. He had neither 
the emotion nor the imagination of a great poet, but his gift of 
rapid narration and his familiarity with history and legend enabled 
him to write spirited, vigorous verse on famous old traditions. 
The objective nature of these ballads of action suggests the poetry 
of Scott. 

Because of his interesting style and his marvelous fund of knowi^ 
edge Macaulay has been the popularizer of history and literature 
to his own and every succeeding generation. It has been remarked 
that all the historical and literary information many people 
possess came from their reading of Macaulay's essays; these bril- 
liant discussions of men and events have proved a veritable 
education to hundreds of thousands who had not the advantages 
of formal training in school and college. He never wrote an ob- 
scure sentence in his life; he was not given to philosophic specu- 
lation; he was no mystic, but a sensible Englishman who kept 
close to the ground and the practical considerations of life, and 
before whom, as Morley says, the world was spread out clear. 
By his brilliant antithetical style and historical imagination he 
was indeed able "to throw a golden halo around the secularity 
of the hour," though he was wanting in depth of thought and in 
spiritual sensitiveness. But clearness is a cardinal virtue, and the 
prose of Macaulay is a model of clear, eloquent, and vigorous 
writing. 

THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881) 

His Life. — Thomas Carlyle, essayist, historian, and prophet, was born 
at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, in 1795, the son of a stonemason 
of strong character and intellect. His mother, who learned to write in order 
that she might correspond with her son, was lovingly described by him as 
"of the fairest descent, that of the pious, the just, and the wise." Carlyle 
attended the village school until 1809, when he walked eighty miles to Edin- 
burgh and entered the University, his purpose being to prepare for the minis- 
try in accordance with the wish of his father. At the University of Edin- 
burgh he made an excellent record in Latin and mathematics and read an 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



365 



enormous number of books. After a few years it became clear to Carlyle 
that he was not intended for the Church, and he spent some time in teaching, 
first at Annan, then at Kirkaldy, trying in restlessness of spirit meanwhile 
to decide upon the nature of his life work. At Kirkaldy he met Edward 
Irving, head of a rival school there, and between the two an enduring 
friendship was established; Irving soon gave up teaching, went to Edin- 
burgh, and became famous as a preacher. Under his influence Carlyle 
turned from mathematics to history; he studied German, made translations 
from French scientific papers, read law books a while, and taught again. 
All this time he was undergoing great spiritual agony, afflicted with insom- 
nia and dyspepsia, living a sort of befogged existence in Edinburgh. In 1821 
came a crisis in his life, when in Leith Walk, as vividly described in Sar- 
tor Resartus, he hurled defiance at the demon of despair and doubt, experi- 
enced a spiritual new-birth, and came out of the struggle a free and resolute 
man consecrated henceforth to the preaching of the gospel of Work and the 
smashing of shams. 

For several years following this crisis-year of 1821 Carlyle taught, trans- 
lated from French and German, and contributed articles to the Edinburgh 
Encyclopaedia and to magazines. Between 1822 and 1824 he was tutor to a 
prominent family in Edinburgh named Buller; the latter year he translated 
Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and soon thereafter began a correspondence 
with the great German which continued until Goethe's death in 1832. In 
1826 he married Jane Welsh, daughter of a Haddington surgeon, a brilliant 
and accomplished woman to whom he had been introduced several years 
before by his friend Edward Irving. Mrs. Carlyle was a rarely gifted wo- 
man who fully appreciated the genius of her husband; indeed, she had mar- 
ried him mainly because of his genius, and such little differences as would 
naturally arise from time to time between two delicately sensitive persons 
more or less afflicted with poor digestion have been unduly magnified. 
There can be no doubt that each had for the other an enduring love; lone- 
liness, melancholy, and a certain ironic humor, characteristic of both, some- 
times Qaused utterances which earlier biographers wrongly interpreted. 
The Carlyles lived for two years at Comley Bank, Edinburgh, then moved 
to a remote and quiet spot sixteen miles from Dumfries called Craigen- 
puttock, where they spent six years. In this barren, lonely place the young 
author wrote his first really significant work, Sartor Resartus; here also 
the Essay on Burns was written; meanwhile Carlyle had won the esteem 
of Jeffrey, the famous reviewer. Finding it difficult to do literary work 
away from great libraries, Carlyle left Craigenputtock in 1834 to make 
London his home. 

The rest of his long life was spent in London at 5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 
preserved as a Carlyle memorial now, whither every year thousands of 
lovers of the ' 'Sage of Chelsea" make their pilgrimage. The publication of 



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the French Revolution in 1837 brought him international recognition. He 
soon came to know the great literary men of his own and other countries; 
Emerson had come across the Atlantic to visit him at Craigenputtock, and 
the two kept up for years a correspondence. At first the Chelsea household 
was a frugal one; the master was struggling into fame, working hard at his 




CARLYLE MONUMENT, CHELSEA, LONDON 



essays, histories, lectures, in that double-walled study on the top floor so 
constructed that the noises of the street and the crowing of neighboring 
roosters might not disturb him. He and his brilliant wife became the cen- 
ter of a group of distinguished men of letters who liked to drop in and take 
a cup of tea and talk philosophy and literature. John Stuart Mill, Leigh 
Hunt, Landor, Kingsley, Dickens. Ruskin, Browning, Tennyson, and others 



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were visitors there. The stream of talk did not always flow, if we may 
credit the story of one of Tennyson's visits: Carlyle and Tennyson sat 
silent by the fireside the evening through, each smoking his pipe. When at 
length Tennyson arose to go, Carlyle broke the two or three hours of silence 
with the words: "We've had a grand evening, Alfred; come again." 

Honors of various kinds came to Carlyle, but he probably regarded his 
election as Rector of the University of Edinburgh in 1865 as the greatest. 
He went to the old Scottish city the next year to deliver his inaugural 
address, and received a notable ovation from the officials and students of 
the University. In the midst of this triumph came to him the sad news 
of his wife's sudden death of heart failure while driving in Hyde Park, 
London. From this blow the old man never fully recovered: the light of 
his life, he said, had gone out, and the remaining fifteen years of his ex- 
istence were for the most part given to lamenting his loss and paying tribute 
to the virtues of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Carlyle died in 1881, and according 
to his wish was buried among his kindred in the humble little village of 
Ecclefechan, though the English people thought Westminster Abbey the 
proper resting place for so great a genuis. 

His Personality. — The personality of Carlyle is one of the most 
interesting in nineteenth century literature; we know a good deal 
about him, for many who saw and conversed with him have left 
us their impressions, while he himself had much to say of his own 
life. The bent, gloomy, sad-faced man so familiar to the dwellers 
in Chelsea in his later years, the stern and lonely prophet in his 
study attacking shams and half-cynically upbraiding a crooked 
and perverse generation, — that is the Carlyle of the popular mind. 
There is, however, a more attractive Carlyle whom Emerson visited 
at Craigenputtock in 1833, and whom he describes as "tall and 
gaunt, with a cliff-like brow, self-possessed and holding his extra- 
ordinary powers of conversation in easy command; clinging to 
his northern accent with evident relish; full of lively anecdote, 
and with streaming humor which floated everything he looked 
upon." 

Along with the intensity and deep purposefulness of his nature 
there went a grim and picturesque humor which showed itself 
when he was talking in frequent volcanic bursts of laughter, as 
if he were mightily amused at "the biped called man," himself 
included. At heart, he was one of the tenderest of men, but his 



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Scotch reticence kept him from laying bare his heart in talk as 
he did in writing. He had struggled hard, he was a prodigious 
worker, he was afflicted all his life with insomnia and dyspepsia, 
he had passed through great spiritual agony in earlier life, and he 
had the melancholy and the sense of loneliness that so often ac- 
company genius. 

His Works and Literary Characteristics. — The writings of Car- 
lyle may be roughly divided into Essays, Histories, and Biogra- 
phies. He began his literary career by translating Goethe's 
Wilhelm Meister and writing a Life of Schiller for the London 
Magazine, and thus introduced the English reading public to 
German literature. Then followed a number of essays contributed 
to the Edinburgh Review and other periodicals, especially Fraser's 
Magazine, the most striking of which are those on Burns, Goethe, 
Characteristics, Biography, BoswelVs Life of Johnson, and Sir 
Walter Scott. Most of these were occasioned by new biographies 
which were then in the hands of readers or by the appearance of 
new editions of the works of well-known authors. The most 
widely read of these earlier essays of Carlyle is, of course, the 
Essay on Burns, which appeared in 1828, in the Edinburgh Review, 
following Lockhart's Life of Burns, published the same year. 

The Essay on Burns is one of the best things Carlyle ever did, 
both in style and content, though it is hardly typical: its freedom 
from involved and jerky phraseology separates it from many of 
the subsequent utterances written in true "Carlylese." Sympathy 
for the man Burns, pity for his frailties, and profound admiration 
for his sincerity and the "indisputable air of Truth" about his 
poetry, led Carlyle to present the most attractive portrait of the 
Scotch poet in our literature. His vital sympathy for Burns, 
it must be remembered, was due first of all to the fact that Carlyle 
himself had also struggled, was poor, and had peasant ancestry; 
then, too, Burns was a fellow-countryman whose best verse cele- 
brates in a very spontaneous way the strong and simple life of the 
Scottish people. The subject was entirely congenial to Carlyle, 
and forms the first of that long series of hero pictures which make 
up so considerable a part of his writing. 



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In 1840, Carlyle delivered a series of six lectures in London, 
which were published the next year under the title, Heroes and 
Hero Worship. In these he set forth in striking phrase and with 
apt illustration his theory that "universal history, the history of 
what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history 
of the great men who have worked here." Choosing a few typical 
heroes of the world — Odin, the old Norse god, Mohammed, 
Dante, Luther, Johnson, Cromwell — he discusses the Hero as 
Divinity, as Prophet, as Poet, as Man of Letters, and as King. 
Carlyle did not accept the modern notion that man is in great 
part the product of his environment and that history is an evolu- 
tion of certain definite forces, social, political, and other. For the 
democratic and scientific tendencies of his day and ours, he cared 
little; with him the great man, the leader, the hero, was everything. 
The biographies of great men formed, in his opinion, the essence 
of history. 

The one book in which Carlyle most fully reveals the depths of 
his own personality, the spiritual autobiography into which he 
put the struggles of years, is Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Re- 
patched). This extraordinary volume appeared as a serial in 
Eraser's Magazine in 1833-1834; Emerson, one of the very few 
upon whom it thus early made a profound impression, had the 
work published in book form in the United States, where it was 
well received; the first English edition came out two years later, 
in 1838. Sartor Resartus purports to be a translation, with running 
comments by Carlyle, of a manuscript left by a certain German 
professor, one Herr Teufelsdrockh, of the University of Weiss- 
nichtwo (Don't-know-where) ; and so cleverly did Carlyle act 
the part of editor and translator of the supposed manuscript 
that many were led to look for the fictitious professor and his 
university in encyclopaedia and atlas. The subject is the philoso- 
phy of clothes, by which Carlyle means the outward vesture or 
symbol of things — conventional customs, traditions, opinions — 
concealing the inner soul or reality. He would teach men to 
look through the deceptive coverings to the vital spirit of truth, 
the divine reality, concealed by them. The book as a whole is an 



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attack on various kinds of shams, a chaotic jumble of philosophy, 
rhapsody, humor, romance, and exhortation. The work contains 
the germ of Carlyle's later writings. It is written in the queerest 
sort of style, rugged, uncouth, disjointed, and sometimes strangely 
beautiful and tender — the unique prose-poem of our literature. 

Of the historical works of Carlyle — the French Revolution 
(1837), Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (1845), and the Life and 
Times of Frederick the Great (1858-1865) — the French Revolution 
is the most remarkable for its dramatic power and for the flash- 
light thrown upon the actors and scenes in that blood-and-thunder 
upheaval of the old social and political order. It is not a history 
in the usual sense, and one who does not already know something 
of the events referred to will have a hard time interpreting Car- 
lyle's pictures, for the painter assumes an acquaintance with the 
bare facts on the part of the reader. The book is an illuminated 
panorama, with thunder-and-lightning accompaniment, of the 
movements of infuriated mobs, of guillotinings, of stormings of 
prisons and palaces, and of the deaths of great personages. In 
Cromwell's Letters and Speeches Carlyle made a lifelike portrayal 
of the great Puritan leader, changing the popular conception of 
Cromwell as a fanatic and hypocrite to one of regard for him as a 
patriotic and sincere leader. The Life of John Sterling (1851) is^ 
one of the best biographies in the language, written out of Carlyle's 
personal knowledge and love of a noble character. In all these 
works he simply applies in an extended way his earlier method of 
dealing with great men as heroes. 

Carlyle's Style. — So unlike all other prose styles in English 
literature is that of Carlyle, that a brief paragraph must be given 
to a characterization of it. The first thing to be noted is the rich- 
ness of his vocabulary : the variety of his diction and his readiness 
to "coin words to fit his ideas" remind one of Shakespeare. Certain 
of his favorite words, which John Sterling characterized as "posi- 
tively barbarous," — such as "environment," "visualized," "tal- 
ented," — have become common enough since his day. Carlyle 
had a keen pictorial sense which expressed itself in picturesque 
phraseology, particularly in his descriptions of persons and dra- 



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371 



matic scenes. Indeed, his descriptive power has not been surpassed 
in nineteenth-century prose, not even by the novelists. In the 
making of his sentences he avoids an artificial model, and conse- 
quently in such works as Sartor Resartus and the French Revo- 
lution there is abundant ground for his editorial comment on the 
style of Herr Teufelsdrockh, which is, of course, his own: 

Of his sentences perhaps not more than nine tenths stand straight on 
their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, buttressed up by 
props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever with this or the other tag-rag 
hanging from them; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite 
broken-backed and dismembered. 

This eccentric sentence-building is naturally most noticeable 
when Carlyle's sense of the ludicrous runs riot, as it often does; 
but when the mood is gentler, the harmony of the cadenced 
sentences is like the subdued music of great poetry, and then his 
utterance is simple and straightforward. Thus, in speaking of 
the death of Goethe he says: 

So then our greatest has departed. That melody of life, with its cunning 
tones, which took captive ear and heart, has gone silent; the heavenly force 
that dwelt here victorious over so much is here no longer; thus far, not 
farther, by speech and by act, shall the wise man utter himself forth. 

Carlyle's Message. — Carlyle's militant moral earnestness was 
a tonic to his own generation, which was about to lose its hold 
on the eternal verities through the ease and self-complacency 
that attend great material prosperity. His mission was to keep 
men from being too much at ease in Zion; against their indiffer- 
ence to truth, their spiritual indolence, their contentment with 
things as they are, he thundered with the energy and zeal of an 
old Hebrew prophet. He preached the sacredness of Duty, the 
dignity of Labor, and the sustaining power of the gospel of Work. 
He insisted that every one should find out his task and stand to 
it: "Up! up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might. Work while it is called to-day; for the night cometh 
wherein no man can work." Next to his insistence on the duty of 



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Work is that on the duty of Veracity, or Sincerity, as opposed to 
cant and sham. To those who assert that happiness is the chief 
end of life he said : "The end of man is an Action and not a Thought, 
though it were the noblest." Carlyle's views of politics and 
science were thoroughly conservative, almost reactionary; he had 
no faith in democracies, while for modern science, especially evo- 
lution, his contempt was as great as was his ignorance of its prin- 
ciples and progress. The stimulating effect of his message on 
his own and later days has proved immense; it can be safely said 
that he helped to raise the ethical tone of the English people, 
while his friends, Ruskin and Tennyson, gladly acknowledged the 
influence of his mighty spirit on their own lives. 

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900) 

His Life. — John Ruskin, art critic and social reformer, was born in Lon- 
don in 1819, the son of a prosperous and cultured wine merchant of Scotch 
descent. In London and its. suburbs Ruskin spent over half of his life. His 
early training in books he received from his mother, who made him read 
daily the Bible and memorize long chapters of it, until the contents and style 
became a familiar possession. Later in life he wrote of this first schooling: 
"My mother forced me to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart; as well 
as to read it every syllable through aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis 
to the Apocalypse, about once a year; and to that discipline — patient, 
accurate, and resolute — I owe, not only a knowledge of the book, which 
I find occasionally serviceable, but much of my general power of taking 
pains, and the best part of my taste in literature." His father had a good 
library, and the boy was early made acquainted with standard literature: 
Scott's Waverley Novels, Pope's translation of Homer, Robinson Crusoe, 
Pilgrim' s Progress, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and other classics he either 
read himself or listened to his father read. Having learned to draw, he 
illustrated his own books, and so he was gradually led to understand art. 
His home was adorned with pictures and curios, which his father's wealth 
and good taste had provided, and from these all unconsciously he was trained 
into an appreciation of the beautiful. Every summer, too, the family went 
on a two months' drive through the loveliest parts of England and Scotland. 

On his fourteenth birthday Ruskin was presented by his father's business 
partner with a copy of the poet Rogers's Italy, illustrated by Turner, the 
great artist, whose name was destined to become more familiar to the 
world through his young admirer's works. The reading of this poem and 
the study of the illustrations in it formed a crisis in Ruskin's life, for they 



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6T6 




JOHN RUSKIN 
From the Memorial Cross on Derwent Water, Lake District 



filled him with a desire to see the Alps and the art treasures of Italy. Ac- 
cordingly, the next summer the family made a tour of Germany, Switzer- 
land, and northern Italy; this was the first of Ruskin's numerous visits to 
Italy, which furnished him with material for much of his writings on art. 
In 1836 Ruskin entered Christ Church College, Oxford University, where he 
was a good student. Ill health interfered with his college course; he went 
to Italy for a year or two, returning to Oxford in 1842 to take his degree. 
Ruskin's sensitive nature and girlish ways at first provoked a good deal 
of amusement among his fellow-students at Oxford, but his intellectual 
powers soon won their respect. While at the University he won the Newdi- 
gate prize in poetry and wrote a magazine article on some geological obser- 
vations in the Alps and several articles on architecture. 

With no taste for business and with no desire to enter the Church, for 
which his fond parents had intended him, Ruskin fortunately followed his 
fancy and became an art critic. The rest of his life, except for an episode 
or two, may be read in his books, which are steeped in his own personality. 
From 1842 to 1860 he gave himself with singular devotion to the interpre- 
tation of art, to writing, lecturing, traveling, studying. His first great 
work was Modem Painters; his fame grew as his list of books lengthened. 
His marriage in 1848 to a beautiful Scotch girl was a mistake, for she was 



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fond of gay social life while Ruskin was a quiet student; after a few years 
they separated by mutual consent and no blame attaches to either. From 
1869 to 1879 and during 1883-1884 Ruskin was Professor of Art at Oxford, 
lecturing to crowded halls of students and others. His popularity with his 
students, as well as his willingness to work out his own theories, may be 
gathered from the fact that professor and students used to go out from 
Oxford and mend the roads in the neighborhood and do landscape-garden- 
ing just for the joy of the working. 

After 1860 Ruskin became an ardent social reformer, and henceforth his 
writings are intensely purposeful. The last twenty-five or thirty years of 
his life were spent for the most part at Brantwood on Coniston Water in 
the Lake District, whither he went after the death of his father and mother. 
Here the old man lived quietly, his mind darkened at times by severe 
attacks of brain fever and his spirit saddened by the failure of some of his 
plans for reform and by the rampant materialism of a scientific age. Rus- 
kin died in 1900 and was buried in the village churchyard at Coniston. 
Among the numerous floral offerings sent from various parts of the king- 
dom was a simple one from the local village tailor with a card bearing the 
inscription: "There was a man sent from God whose name was John." 

Ruskin as Art Critic. — The works of Ruskin fall naturally into 
two fairly well-defined groups: those having to do with art as an 
expression of the true, the beautiful, and the good, and pointing 
out to the people of England what they should admire; and those 
concerned with the proper conduct of life, declaring to his country- 
men what they should do and be. Up to 1860 he devoted himself 
to the interpretation of art; and then he gave himself energeti- 
cally to instructing Englishmen in social and ethical principles 1 , 
earnestly appealing to them to apply these principles. The prin- 
cipal works of this earlier period are Modern Painters (1843-1860), 
The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), and The Stones of Venice 
(1851-1853). The first of the five volumes of Modern Painters 
was in defense of the great English artist, J. W. M. Turner, whom 
many of the older critics did not understand. Ruskin's eulogy 
of Turner provoked the hostility of the orthodox art critics, but 
won for him among the more open-minded lovers of art, especially 
the poets, enthusiastic praise, which has since been abundantly 
justified by the universal recognition of Turner as one of the 
great artists of the world. In the second and succeeding volumes 



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of Modern Painters Ruskin sets forth in detail his ideas about 
the nature and uses of art: (1) art is the revealer of truth; (2) 
the main business of art is "its service in the actual uses of daily 
life" ; (3) art, in so far as it reveals truth and serves men, is insep- 
arably connected with morality. 

In The Stones of Venice — a minute study of the churches and 
palaces of that old city in the sea — and in The Seven Lamps of 
Architecture Ruskin shows his devotion to Gothic architecture; 
in these works also he has much to say of the moral element in 
art. He b>elieved that as great architecture is a reflection of the 
virtues and vices of a nation, so art in general reveals the moral 
strength and weakness of the artist. Noble art implies a nobler 
individual or national life, and the right appreciation of such 
art demands real nobility of soul. Ruskin held, moreover, that 
art should follow nature, striving to represent things as they 
probably did look and happen. Thus he allied himself with the 
Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood composed of such men as Holman 
Hunt and Sir John Millais, the artists, and William Morris and 
Rossetti, the poets, each of whom aimed at producing work in 
the spirit that prevailed before the time of Raphael. 

Ruskin as Social Reformer. — The most important of the group 
of Ruskin's works devoted to social reform are Sesame and Lilies 

(1865) , The Ethics of the Dust (1866), The Crown of Wild Olive 

(1866) , and Fors Clavigera (1871-1874). "There is no wealth 
but life," says Ruskin, — "life, including all its powers of love, of 
j oy , and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes 
the greatest number of noble and happy human beings." Ruskin 
did not simply teach; he actually practised what he preached, 
reminding us somewhat in this respect of Tolstoi, the Russian 
reformer. He not only spent almost all of the large fortune left 
him by his father on his social projects — the founding of art 
schools, libraries, museums, cooperative stores, St. George's 
Guild in London, — but worked with his own hands at making 
roads, cleaning streets, and the like, besides lecturing and writing 
letters to bodies of laboring-men. 

Many of the reforms for which Ruskin contended, and for the 



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advocacy of which he was laughed at and even violently attacked 
in his own day, have since been realized; others we are now trying 
to work out by our modern method of cooperation. He went 
too far, of course, in his protests against machinery and other 
forms of industrial progress, but we must not be too swift to con- 
demn such a sincere prophet as he was, crying out a warning 
against a growing spirit of materialism and a consequent Tndif- 
ference to moral values. He, like Carlyle, was a preacher of social 
righteousness and human brotherhood, proclaiming the beauty 
and the duty of honest work. 

Sesame and Lilies and The Crown of Wild Olive. — Every stu- 
dent should at least read Sesame and Lilies and The Crown of 
Wild Olive. Sesame and Lilies consists of two lectures, "Of Kings' 
Treasuries" and "Of Queens' Gardens." By "Kings' Treas- 
uries" Ruskin means great books written by kingly men, the 
reading of which ennobles you and me. He discusses what and 
how to read, the treasures hidden in books; the way we find 
them and the way we lose them; the treatment is ethical, or with 
reference to the conduct of life, as it is in his works on painting 
and architecture. "Whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly 
and benevolently done, that bit is his book or his piece of art." 
"Sesame" is the magic word or talisman which, as used in the 
Arabian Nights, is a key to unlock rich treasures. Ruskin goes 
on to talk about the folly of regarding material wealth as the 
basis of a nation's greatness; a nation that cares nothing for 
literature, science, art, beauty, compassion, can never be great. 
The value of words is illustrated by a careful study of a passage 
from Milton's "Lycidas." The well-known paragraph in Sesame 
and Lilies on the fellowship of good books everyone should read 
and reread: 

Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when 
you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourself that it is with any 
worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect, that you jostle with 
the hungry and common crowd for entree here, and audience there, when 
all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society, wide as the 
world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty, of every plane 



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and time? Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellow- 
ship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into, you can 
never be an outcast but by your own fault. 

The second lecture, "Of Queens' Gardens/' treats of ideal woman- 
hood, woman's education, and woman's influence in the world. 
The theme is the same as that of Tennyson's Princess, and the 
views advanced in the two works essentially the same. Ruskin's 
discussion of woman's training and work is sane, beautiful, and 
wholesome, though the flavor is a little old-fashioned. The word 
"Lilies" in the title of the book was suggested to Ruskin by the 
use of the lily in Isaiah as a symbol of purity, peace, and beauty. 

The Crown of Wild Olive consists of four lectures on "Work," 
"Traflac," "War," and the "Future of England," delivered before 
working men, business men, and soldiers. Aside from the matter, 
The Crown of Wild Olive contains some of Ruskin's finest prose. 
The Ethics of the Dust is concerned with the education of young 
housewives, and is excellent reading for young women. In ad- 
dition to these works, one should read The Queen of the Air for the 
beauty of its symbolism and the delightful idealism of its teach- 
ing; while for an entertaining record of Ruskin's life, written at 
the suggestion of his friend Charles Eliot Norton, great Amer- 
ican scholar and art critic, Praeterita (1887), a delightful autobi- 
ography, should be read. 

Ruskin's Style. — The prose of Ruskin is among the noblest in 
the whole range of literature ; one is reminded in reading it aloud 
of the simple and yet heightened diction of the English Bible, 
on which he was brought up, and the long musical periods of such 
seventeenth-century writers as Thomas Browne and Jeremy 
Taylor. Ruskin says in The Queen of the Air that he has three 
ways of writing: "one with the single view of making myself 
understood, in which case I necessarily omit a great deal of 
what comes into my head; another, in which I say what I think 
ought to be said, in what I suppose to be the best words I can find 
for it (which is in reality an affected style — be it good or bad); 
and my third way of writing is to say all that comes into my head 



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for my own pleasure, in the first words that come, retouching them 
afterwards." The second of these styles is most characteristic of 
Ruskin, by the common consent of readers his greatest, — the 
ornate, or "decorated" style, of which the principal elements are 
poetic color and rhythm. 

MATTHEW ARNOLD (1822-1888) 

His Life. — Matthew Arnold, essayist and poet, was born at Laleham, 
in the valley of the Thames, in 1822, the son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, the 
famous headmaster of Rugby, a familiar figure to readers of Tom Brown'" 
School Days. After preliminary training at Winchester and Rugby, Arnold 
entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1841. At Oxford he won a scholarship 
and the Newdigate prize for a poem on Cromwell, stood well in the classics, 
and entered heartily into the social and athletic life of the University. 
In 1845 he was elected a fellow of Oriel College; after leaving Oxford the 
same year, Arnold returned to Rugby, and for a short time taught in the 
school there. In 1847 he was appointed secretary to Lord Lansdowne, an 
influential member of the British government, serving in this position until 
1851, when he was made inspector of schools. The same year he mar- 
ried Miss Frances Wightman, daughter of a prominent English judge. The 
home life of Arnold was a happy one; few literary men indeed, have shown 
greater love for family and intimate friends than Arnold: he was a charm- 
ing companion, versatile and witty, and specially fond of children. The 
inspectorship of English schools Arnold held for thirty-five years, during 
which he visited the continent several times in order to study educational 
conditions, examined teachers and corrected tens of thousands of examina- 
tion papers, — drudgery which he performed with commendable thorough- 
ness. Meanwhile he had written considerable poetry. 

Recognition of his worth as a poet and a critic is to be found in his appoint- 
ment in 1857 as Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford, a position 
which he filled with distinction for ten years. The duties of this office 
did not conflict with those of his school inspectorship, which he continued 
to hold; but the preparation of lectures for Oxford students led him into 
the field of literary criticism and away from the production of poetry. 
Henceforth he is preeminently the critic and essayist. Arnold's writing 
was usually done at night as recreation after a hard day's work at the details 
of his somewhat exacting vocation; and when one considers the number 
of volumes he turned out, one's admiration for his industry is as great as 
one's delight in the brilliant quality of his achievement. In 1883 he received 
a pension from the government, and the same year he sailed for America 
to give a course of lectures. These lectures were not of the popular type, 



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but because of Arnold's fame as a critic and a poet his audiences were large. 
The American newspapers made good-natured fun of his supercilious manner, 
and probably no one enjoyed their comments more than Arnold himself. 
He made many new friends, however, and carried back home a respectable 
tribute of American dollars. Three years later he again visited the United 
States, where he now had a married daughter; but ill health kept him from 
the full enjoyment of this visit. Two years later, in 1888, he died suddenly 
in Liverpool, whither he had gone to meet his daughter who had a few days 
before sailed from New York. He is buried in the churchyard at Laleham, 
his ancestral home. 

Arnold as a Poet. — Most of Arnold's poetry, as already indi- 
cated, was written before he became Professor of Poetry at Oxford 
in 1857, his last poems appearing the very year (1876) he retired 
from that ehair. Of the longer narrative poems the most notable 
are Balder Dead and Sohrab and Rustum. In the first he chose a 
theme from the old Norse mythology;; in the second, he clothed in 
singularly musical verse the Persian legend of the death of the 
heroic young warrior Sohrab at the hands of his father, the 
mighty Rustum, who, separated from his son in infancy, recog- 
nizes him by a gold bracelet only after he has mortally wounded 
his young unknown antagonist. There are few more solemnly 
beautiful lines in English poetry than those at the end of Sohrab 
and Rustum telling how Rustum and his son were left alone there 
on the banks of the majestic river Oxus in the stillness of the 
starlit night. Arnold's one important dramatic poem is Emped- 
ocles on Etna, based on the old classic myth. Among the shorter 
poems those mcst worthy to be read and reread are "Thyrsis," 
an elegy on the poet Clough, "Rugby_ Chapel/' a tribute to his 
father, "The Grande Chartreuse," "The_gchokr-Gypsy,'' "A 
Southern Night," "Switzerland," "Kensington Gardens," "Self- 
Dependence," "Requiescat," "The Future," "Shakespeare," 
"Philomela," and "Dover Beach." "Dover Beach," in particular, 
voices that strain of disillusion which sounds through Arnold's 
poetry, full of haunting sadness and exquisite regret at the loss 
of earlier faith. 

Finding little comfort in the older dogmas of philosophy and 
religion, Arnold falls back on a kind of stoical resignation, bracing 



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himself against the inevitable. He did not, like Tennyson, 
patiently build up a new and shining structure out of the wrecks 
ofthe old by "faintly trusting the larger hope/' until doubt yielded 
to a working faith. Arnold's poetry is coldly intellectual, Greek 
in form, without buoyancy and hope, and suffused with wistful 
melancholy; and in many of his readers, beset with the perplexi- 
ties of an age of transition, it found a sympathetic responsiveness. 
Because it does voice the inarticulate questionings of so many 
thoughtful men and women, and because it has imperishable 
distinction of form, Matthew Arnold, in the opinion of an increas- 
ing number of readers, deserves to rank as the third great poet 
of the Victorian Era. 

Arnold as Critic. — Arnold's prose writings consist of essays on 
literature, politics, religion, and education. Representative 
volumes are the following: On Translating Homer and On the 
Study of Celtic Literature, two illuminating lectures delivered at 
Oxford; Culture and Anarchy, in which Arnold sets forth his 
gospel of ideas and severely arraigns British "Philistinism"; 
Literature and Dogma, a plea for a liberal, literary interpretation 
of the Bible; Discourses in America, three lectures given in the 
United States; Essays in Criticism, first and second series, contain- 
ing his most significant utterances as a literary critic. The essay 
on "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time," found in 
Essays in Criticism, first series (1865), is an exposition of Arnold's 
critical method. He defines criticism as "a disinterested endeavour 
to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the 
world." To him culture is not "a having and a resting," but "a 
getting and a becoming"; he would incite men to the pursuit of 
perfection by freeing them from provinciality; he would have 
them "help make reason and the will of God prevail" by estab- 
lishing "a current of fresh and true ideas." The essential attitude 
of the critic is one of disinterestedness; only thus can he hope 
to see things as they really are and to make the best ideas prevail. 
By the "Philistines" — a word much used in his works — Arnold 
means the self-satisfied, provincial, self-complacent members of 
the prosperous British middle-class whose minds are quite im- 



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pervious to new ideas; these persons he never wearies of satir- 
izing. 

Arnold's style is severely intellectual, Greek in its restraint, 
luminous, passionless except when he is writing of Oxford, — which 
he devotedly loved and abundantly scolded — and almost Addi- 
sonian in its urbanity. He has enriched our language with a 
number of striking phrases, which have become a part of the 
equipment of talkers and writers on literature: "high seriousness, " 
"sweetness and light' ' (borrowed from Swift), "the not ourselves 
which makes for righteousness," "sweet reasonableness," "natural 
magic," poetry as "a criticism of life," "lucidity of mind," "the 
grand style,"— these are some of his well-known expressions. 
He is fond of hitting off a writer's character or style by a taking 
phrase; as, for instance, when he calls Shelley "a beautiful and 
ineffectual angel," or declares that "Burke saturates politics with 
thought," or characterizes Emerson as "the friend and aider of 
those who would live in the spirit." It would be hard to find 
more exquisitely modulated prose than that in Arnold's apostrophe 
to Oxford, — "steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens 
to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchant- 
ments of the Middle Age," — and that at the beginning of the 
Emerson essay on Newman's preaching in St. Mary's. The best 
essays of Arnold for the general reader are those in his first and 
second series on Criticism and that on Emerson in the Discourses 
in America. 

Aside from the merits of his critical opinions — and these are great 
—Matthew Arnold rendered a notable service to English literature 
when he made his readers familiar with some of the rarer spirits 
of continental literature, particularly the great French critic 
Sainte-Beuve, of whom he was in a certain sense a follower. Arnold 
himself, because of his open-mindedness, wide culture, keen 
intellectual power, and lucid style, is the foremost literary critic 
of the Victorian period. 

John Henry Newman (1801-1890). — Newman was born in 
London, and educated at Oxford, where he became Fellow of 
Oriel College and vioar of St. Mary's church in the same Universi* 



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ty. He was a leader in the Oxford High Church movement which 
sought to revive in the English Church the spiritual devotion, 
the poetry, and the mystic charm of the Middle Ages. In 1845 
he was received into the Catholic Church, and was made a cardinal 
in 1879. Such in brief is the life of Cardinal Newman, hymn- 
writer, theologian, and essayist. Everyone who has read the 
opening paragraph of Matthew Arnold's lecture on Emerson will 
remember the tribute to Newman, the University preacher, by 
his younger contemporary: "Who could resist the charm of that 
spiritual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through 
the aisles of St. Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and then, in the 
most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and 
thoughts which were a religious music,— subtle, sweet, mournful?" 

Newman was, of course, primarily a theologian, but he delivered 
a series of lectures as Rector of Dublin University, entitled col- 
lectively The Idea of a University (1852), and wrote a defense of 
his own life, Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864) — a religious autobiog- 
raphy, justifying his change from the English Church to the Roman, 
and in reply to Charles Kingsley's charge of hypocrisy. These, 
along with other works, show him to be a master of English prose. 
His style is easy, lucid, and leisurely; it shows "the mood of the 
man of the world, sweetened and ennobled, and enriched by pro- 
found knowledge and deep feeling and spiritual seriousness." 1 
As a whole, Newman's writings are not very quotable, so closely 
woven is the tissue of his thought; but now and then one comes 
across such epigrams as these: "Great things are done by devotion 
to one idea"; "Calculation never made a hero"; "Here below to 
live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often." 
The distinction of Newman's personality shines through his style, 
which has "the charm of an incommunicable simplicity," — to 
use a phrase from one of his lectures. In addition to his numerous 
prose works, Newman wrote many poems, the most famous of 
which is "Lead, Kindly Light," one of the great hymns of the 
world. 



1 Gates: Selections from Newman, Introduction, XLII. 



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Walter Pater (1839-1894). — As a stylist pure and simple, an 
interpreter of the Italian Renaissance to the nineteenth century, 
and leader of the "Aesthetic Movement" in English letters, — 
which grew out of the Pre-Raphaelite movement already referred 
to in connection with Ruskin, — Walter Pater is unique. He was 
born in London, educated at Oxford, and spent most of his life 
as Fellow of Brasenose College in the old University city, quietly 
weaving his exquisite tapestry of subtle fancies. Some of his 
works are: Studies in the History of the Renaissance, Marius the 
Epicurean, Imaginary Portraits, Appreciations, Plato and Platon- 
ism. Pater was a sensitive student of art and literature, keenly 
alive to their coloring and mystery. He was something of a refined 
Epicurean, finding an aesthetic delight in the atmosphere of medi- 
aeval painting and poetic literature in place of the purely material 
pleasures of life. His style is accordingly colored with his own 
emotional impressions, and musically modulated ToF~ him that 
hath ears to hear. His artistry is well-nigh perfect. So steeped 
in culture is he, indeed, so allusive and harmonious in expression, 
^haTthe casual reader would find it difficult to follow him; for 
Pater wrote for his own pleasure, intent upon his art and indiffer- 
ent to fame and the reader. His most widely read sketch is The 
Child in the House, a little autobiographic reminiscence, which 
reveals in words of rare simplicity and lingering charm the mind 
of a sensitive, reflective child as interpreted by the same child 
grown into the man. 

Other Victorian Essayists. — Several other men in this period 
have written essays that have become classics in English prose; 
but as they gave themselves more largely to a different species 
of literary production, or to history, or to science, or to philosophy, 
a brief, mention of their respective contributions to the essay 
must suffice. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, for instance, wrote a 
number of appreciative and personal essays; the greater part of 
his writing, however, is prose fiction, and it therefore seems best 
to consider his work as a whole under the novelists. JAMES AN- 
THONY FROUDE (1818-1894) was a historian with remarkable 
narrative and descriptive powers, a vivacious and racy style, and 



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a glowing imagination. These characteristics are, of course, essen- 
tially literary, and enabled Froude to write history vividly and 
interestingly, though not always accurately. Several chapters in 
his History of England, — for example, that on the execution of 
Mary, Queen of Scots, and that on the defeat of the Spanish Arma- 
da — are among the most brilliant pieces of writing in English 
prose; while Froude's Short Studies on Great Subjects and his two 
sketches, John Bunyan and Julius Caesar , are essays of great 
insight and literary charm. 

Among the writings of the scientific group — Huxley, Darwin, 
and Tyndall — we find certain works that have the qualities of 
genuine literature. The Autobiography, Essays and Lectures of 
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY (1825-1895) have a more distinct lit- 
erary value than those of his colleagues, because of the wide and 
deep human interest of Huxley, who delivered popular addresses 
on scientific subjects, and because of his perfectly clear, trench- 
ant, concrete style and his courage and humor. As a defender 
of the theory of evolution and as an advocate of a more modern 
form of education in England, Huxley engaged in a number of 
lively controversies of the day on those subjects. He was a zeal- 
ous champion of the truth as he saw it, and fought the "Philis- 
tines" with the energy of a born controversialist. Huxley knew 
how to humanize his knowledge; this makes such essays as A 
Liberal Education, The Principal Subjects of Education, The Phys- 
ical Basis of Life, and A Piece of Chalk, vitally interesting to 
the general reader to-day. 

CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882) is famous as the author of a 
book, The Origin of Species (1859), which has the distinction of 
marking an epoch in scientific thinking. The theory of evolution 
by the process of natural selection is set forth with great clear- 
ness and patience; around this book a violent controversy was 
waged, but in the long run it has directly or indirectly influenced 
every department of human thought. Of the philosophers of this 
period, those whose essays are most closely akin to literature 
proper are HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903), and JOHN STUART 
MILL (1806-1873). Spencer interpreted the philosophical aspects 



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of evolution, and built up a great system of Synthetic Philosophy 
in ten volumes; his best known essays are those on Education and 
the Philosophy of Style. Mill advocated what is known as the 
utilitarian philosophy; of his works the two best entitled to be 
called literature are the Autobiography and the stimulating Essay 
on Liberty. 

II. THE VICTORIAN POETS 

The two supreme poets of the Victorian Era are Alfred Tenny- 
son and Robert Browning; each in his way reflects the spirit of 
this age of democracy and science, of speculation and analysis, 
of social and religious unrest. Since the splendid triumph of 
Romanticism in the radiant dreams of Shelley, the Mediaevalism 
of Coleridge and Keats, the passion of Byron, and the reflective 
mood of Wordsworth, a change may be felt in the tone of English 
poetry. Upon the whole it is more directly concerned with the 
social and spiritual problems of life and more personal in expres- 
sion. Doubt, faith, disillusion, struggle, courage, hope are charac- 
teristic notes in the poetry of the age; there is, moreover, greater 
versatility in subject matter as well as a more conscious art. 
After Tennyson and Browning come Matthew Arnold (whose 
poetry has already been discussed), 1 Clough, Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, and Charles 
Algernon Swinburne, — the last three continuing in a more marked 
degree than the others the traditions of the romantic poets. 
Alfred Tennyson is by common consent the representative poet 
of Victorian England. 

ALFRED TENNYSON (1809-1892; 

His Life. — Alfred Tennyson was born at Somersby in Lincolnshire in 
1809, — that birth year of half a dozen famous men — the son of the rector 
of the parish, himself a man of culture and ability. On both sides of the 
house Tennyson came of an old and honorable family. He was prepared 
for college in a school at Louth and then by his father at home, entering 



*See page 379. 



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ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Trinity College, Cambridge, along with his brother Charles in 1828. Mean- 
while Tennyson had written a number of poems, the best of which were 
published under the title, Poems by Two Brothers, the thin volume con- 
taining also the youthful productions of Charles Tennyson. At Cambridge 
Tennyson was a member of a debating society known as "The Apostles," 
composed of a few choice spirits, some of whom later on attained great 
distinction in literature, the church, and politics. Among these was Arthur 
Henry Hallam, intimate friend of Tennyson, whom he immortalized in 
In Memoriam. To his friends Tennyson was already distinguished for his 
love of poetry and his sympathetic recitation of it; he won in 1829 the Uni- 
versity medal for his poem "Timbuctoo," and the next year he published 
Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, which led discriminating critics to speak of him as 
an altogether promising poet. During these years at the University Tenny- 
son spent, in company with Arthur Hallam, a summer in Spain; this was a 
romantic journey, the avowed purpose of it being to aid the revolutionists 
in their uprising against King Ferdinand. The benefit of these travels to 
Tennyson was twofold: a lasting impression of the grand scenery of the 
Pyrenees and the wild beauty of the streams, which later added to the 
setting and music of his lines; and a deeper friendship between himself and 
Hallam. Tennyson left Cambridge in 1831. 

The next six years were spent at Somersby, where in the quietude of a 
somewhat remote region not far from the shores of the North Sea the young 
poet walked, read, meditated, and wrote. He made occasional visits in 
London to his friend Hallam, who was now engaged to Emily Tennyson, 
the poet's sister. Another volume of poems had appeared in 1832, praised 
by many, but more or less severely dealt with by the reviewers. The maga- 
zine criticism somewhat chilled Tennyson's poetic vein, and for a while 
he seems actually to have thought of writing no more; the sudden death 
in Vienna of Arthur Hallam in 1833 further depressed him, and for some 
years he wrote little. In 1837 the family moved to a place not far from 
London, and this meant that he would visit the city oftener and meet 
more intimately the literary men of the capital. Under the encouraging 
appreciation of these men, he felt less keenly the melancholy which was 
\ partly temperamental with him, partly due at this time to the loss of 

Hallam, and in part the result of poverty. In 1842 he published other 
poems, and henceforth his success seemed assured; but in 1844 he had in- 
vested a little money received from the sale of a small estate in Lincoln- 
shire in a wood-carving enterprise and had lost it all. His health failed, 
a severe attack of hypochondria followed, and only the sympathies of his 
friends and the granting of a pension in 1845 by the government brought 
him back to sounder phj'-sical and mental health. 

The year 1850 marks a crisis in Tennyson's life: that year he was married 
to Miss Emily Sellwood, to whom he had long been engaged, he was appointed 



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ALFRED TENNYSON 



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ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Poet Laureate, succeeding Wordsworth, and he published In Memoriam. 
From now on to the end of his long life he was the prince of living English 
poets; his poems and plays appeared in steady succession and were hailed 
with national acclaim. The sale of his works was sufficiently large to 
enable him to buy a handsome estate at Farringford in the Isle of Wight 
and another a few years later at Aldworth in Surrey; part of the year he 
spent at each. Hither, as his fame grew, came pilgrims from his own and 
other lands. 

The Prince Consort's admiration for the poet brought invitations to visit 
the queen and himself at Windsor, where he was ever a welcome guest. 
Honors of various kinds came to him: the University of Oxford conferred 
an honorary degree upon him, Cambridge made him an Honorary Fellow 
of Trinity College, and in 1884 Gladstone induced him to accept a peer- 
age, already twice declined, whereby he became Lord Tennyson. He was 
happy in his marriage; the last great grief of his life was the loss of his 
younger son Lionel by drowning on the homeward voyage from India. 
Old in years and rich in renown, Tennyson died at Aldworth in October, 
1892, his hand resting on an open volume of Shakespeare's Cymbeline. A 
week later he was buried with stately ceremonial in Westminster Abbey 
by the side of his friend and fellow-poet, Robert Browning. 

His Personality. — Tennyson looked the poet and lived the poet. 
The most famous description of him is Carlyle's: "One of the finest 
looking men in the world. A great shock of rough dusky dark hair; 
bright laughing hazel eyes; massive aquiline face, most massive 
yet most delicate; of sallow brown complexion, almost Indian 
looking, clothes cynically loose, free and easy, smokes infinite 
tobacco. His voice is musical, metallic, fit for loud laughter and 
piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and specula- 
tion free and plenteous; I do not meet in these late decades such 
company over a pipe." Much has been written about Tennyson's 
wonderful talk, his fondness for reading aloud his own poetry in 
that deep, rolling, sonorous voice of his, his sensitiveness to criti- 
cism, and his detestation of hero hunters who, through curiosity, 
came in troops to Aldworth or Farringford^ American tourists 
being the chief offenders. Of Tennyson's conversation, his friend 
Captain W. Gordon McCabe, of Richmond, Virginia, says: 
"Tennyson's talk was far and away the best and the most enjoy- 
able I ever listened to, with its dry humor, shading off suddenly 



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into vehement earnestness; its felicity of epithet, that at times 
flashed out like a searchlight, and lighted up the whole subject of 
discussion; its underlying vein of robust common-sense; its 
wealth of apt quotation and charming reminiscence." 1 And the 
same authority mentions Tennyson's "direct honesty and sim- 
plicity in things small and great" as his salient characteristic. 

The Works of Tennyson: Fourfold Classification. — For the sake 
of clearness, even at the sacrifice of perfect accuracy, it is best 
to make a fourfold division of Tennyson's poetry based chiefly 
on subject matter and length of poems, with some regard to the 
order of time. In general it may be said that most of the independ- 
ent shorter poems belong to the earlier and latest years of his life, 
the longer poems to the middle years, say from 1847 (the date 
of The Princess) to about 1875, though most of the dramas be- 
long to the later years. The suggested fourfold division 2 is some- 
thing like this: (1) Poems essentially lyric and pictorial, including 
such representative pieces as the songs from The Princess, the 
"Lotos Eaters," "A Dream of Fair Women," "Lady of Shalott," 
"Charge of the Light Brigade," "CEnone," "Ulysses," "Locksley 
Hall," "Maud," "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington," 
and "Crossing the Bar"; (2) Poems narrative, or epic, such as 
The Princess and Idylls of the King) (3) Poems philosophic and 
more or less autobiographical, like "The Palace of Art," "Vision 
of Sin," "Ancient Sage," and In Memoriam; (4) The dramas. 

Tennyson's distinction as a poet was not generally acknowl- 
edged until 1842, when an enlarged edition of his poems appeared. 
The very early work had been over sweet, lacking in human in- 
terest, abounding in prettiness of sentiment and minor melodies; 
but in such perfect poems as "Ulysses," "Break, Break, Break," 
"CEnone," and the songs in The Princess, sl deeper note was 
struck. Perhaps the most striking thing about these shorter 
poems, earlier and later, is the harmony between the mood and the 

l< 'Personal Recollections of Tennyson," W. Gordon McCabe, Century 
Magazine, March, 1902. 

2 This division, while not identical with that in Dr. Van Dyke's Poems of 
Tennyson, has at least been suggested by that excellent work. 



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expression. How fully this is true in the songs from The Princess — - 
"Tears, Idle Tears," "The Bugle Song," "Sweet and Low,"— and 
in "Crossing the Bar" — that poem which Tennyson desired to 
be put at the end of his works, his swan song — is attested by their 
universal popularity, whether sung or spoken. In the matter of 
patriotic expression, certainly no utterance of English poet has 
sounded a clearer note than the great ode in honor of Wellington; 
while "Ulysses" is a trumpet call to courageous action and the 
pursuit of knowledge — 

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 

The Princess. The Princess, Tennyson's first long poem, is a 
sort of mock-heroic epic on the intellectual emancipation of woman, 
a subject in which Tennyson and others were at this time much 
interested. The poem has as its subtitle A Medley, and this 
saves it from being taken too seriously; for it is a mixture of the 
humorous and the tragic, the true and the burlesque: 

The Princess Ida, betrothed in childhood to the Prince, disregards the 
contract when she comes to woman's estate and sets up a college in which 
women shall be educated wholly apart from men. The Prince and several 
companions disguise themselves as women and enter the sacred precincts, 
but are soon discovered and ignominiously thrust forth. Then the Prince's 
father besieges the college with an army, against which the Princess' big 
brothers rally an opposing force; it is finally decided to settle the dispute 
by a combat of fifty on each side. The Prince's side is defeated and he, 
with many others, is wounded. The college is turned into a hospital, the 
girls sent home, and the wounded brought in and cared for. The Princess 
nurses the Prince, reads to him; and thus it gradually comes about that the 
natural emotions get the better of theories, and Love wins. 

The exquisite songs warm and color the chilly current of the 
story and help to melt the heroine's heart. Woman's cause and 
man's, Tennyson concludes, are the same, and she, though essen- 
tially different in nature, is his equal and therefore deserving of 
equal intellectual and social privileges. The real heroine of the 
poem is a little child, whose presence symbolizes the "child-like 
in the larger mind," and so keeps alive the primal instincts. 



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Maud. Maud (1855) is a monodrama containing some rarely 
beautiful verse reflecting the various moods of a morbid young 
man in love, from despair to rapture, and then to deeper despair, 
then to madness, then back to life and hope through the curative 
virtue of patriotism. The lyrics in Maud are among the most 
musical in Tennyson, though at times the lines seem overloaded 
with decoration. The rising and falling of the emotion brings 
into play with remarkable effect all the lyrical chords; the differ- 
ent phases of passion in one person, Tennyson said, "take the 
place of different characters." For reading aloud, Maud was a 
favorite with the poet. 

Idylls of the King. The Arthurian legends have always made 
a strong appeal to poets and prose romancers; we have seen how 
that worthy knight, Sir Thomas Malory, in the fifteenth century 
collected, rearranged, and, in some cases, retouched the stories 
about Arthur and his knights, making them more accessible and 
more real to English readers. This old book of Malory's, Morte 
D' Arthur, fell into Tennyson's hands when he was a boy and 
fascinated him as it still does every imaginative youth who is 
lucky enough to get hold of it. Two centuries earlier Milton had 
resolved to write an epic on King Arthur, but the Puritan instinct 
in him triumphed and he turned to a more distinctly religious 
subject; Tennyson likewise purposed writing an epic or drama on 
King Arthur, and gave himself twenty years in which to accom- 
plish it. He gradually modified his plan, however, and the Idylls 
of the King — a series of twelve great poems forming a cycle, 
pictorial in method but epic in spirit — was the result. This vast 
cycle was slowly put together: from the first sketches, faint fore- 
shadowings of the Idylls proper — "The Lady of Shalott" (1832), 
"Sir Galahad," "Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere" — to the 
completion of the series in 1888, over fifty years intervened. 

In its completed form the Idylls of the King is a vast allegory 
"shadowing sense at war with Soul." Symbolically considered, 
the several Idylls cover a year, the four seasons being faintly 
reflected in the coloring of the poem. The king first appears on 
the night of the New Year; his marriage to Guinevere is in the 



392 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



spring; early summer is in "Gareth and Lynette," and full-blown 
summer in "Launcelot and Elaine"; early fall with its equinoctial 
storms is in the "Holy Grail"; then the falling leaves of late 
autumn harmonize with the waning fortunes of the kingdom in 
the "Last Tournament." Finally, the mists of winter wrap the 
landscape in "Guinevere," and deep winter holds the earth in the 
"Passing of Arthur" on the last day of the old year. Of all the 
Idylls Tennyson's favorite was "Guinevere," which is, indeed, 
the richest and most modern in psychology. The guilty queen, 
whose sin had ruined a kingdom, is at last herself redeemed by 
love. The epic cycle ends in hope : 

Then slowly answered Arthur from the barge : 
The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
And God fulfills himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 

Scattered through the Idylls are some of the finest lines in nine- 
teenth-century poetry; such, for instance, as these: 

For manners are not idle, but the fruit 
Of loyal nature and of noble mind. 

Mockery is the fume of little hearts. 

All in a death-dumb, autumn-dripping gloom. 

A low sea-sunset glorying round her hair. 

He makes no friend who never made a foe. 

His honour rooted in dishonour stood, 
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. 

Our hoard is little, but our hearts are great. 

In Memoriam. Tennyson's In Memoriam (1850) belongs to 
that noble group of elegies, of which Milton's "Lycidas" and 
Shelley's "Adonais" are shining examples; but in breadth and 
depth of interest, In Memoriam surpasses all the rest. In 1833. 
as already mentioned, Tennyson's intimate friend Arthur Henry 
Hallam died suddenly in Vienna, while on a continental journey 



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with his father, the distinguished historian. Out of this great 
sorrow slowly grew the series of one hundred and thirty-one 
lyrics collectively known as In Memoriam. These lyrics were not 
written in any definite order: "The sections," says Tennyson, 
"were written at many different places, and as the phases of our 
intercourse came to my memory and suggested them. I did 
not write with any view of weaving them into a whole, or for 
publication, until I found that I had written so many." In the 
poem itself the lyrics are spoken of as — ■ 

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip 
Their wings in tears and skim away. 

In Memoriam thus represents a period of occasional composition 
extending over seventeen years (1833-1850); the time covered by 
the events in the poem is three years, including three Christmases 
as centers of three cycles of verse, the whole, according to Tenny- 
son, being divided in its final form into nine sections. To the 
poem proper was prefixed in 1849 the Prologue, a prayer addressed 
to the '"Strong Son of God, Immortal Love," and summing up 
the philosophic and religious meaning of the whole; the poem 
closes with an Epilogue, a sort of Epithalamium, or marriage 
hymn, celebrating the marriage of Tennyson's younger sister 
Cecilia (not the one betrothed to Hallam) to Professor Lushington. 

In Memoriam begins with a despairing mood, then passes into 
one of combat or struggle against doubt, and ends in the triumph of 
faith, though it is withal a somewhat saddened resolve to trust — / 

With faith that comes of self-control, 

The truths that never can be proved 

Until we close with all we loved, 
And all we flow from, soul in soul. 

In regard to the personal and general application of the poem 
Tennyson remarked to a friend: "It is rather the cry of the whole 
human race than mine. In the poem altogether private grief 
swells out into the thought of, and hope for, the whole world. 
It begins with a funeral and ends with a marriage — begins with 
death and ends in promise of a new life — a sort of Divine Comedy, 



394 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



cheerful at the close." The central theme of In Memoriam is 
the immortality of Love; from the gloom of sorrow and the be- 
numbing chill of doubt the poet has slowly and painfully struggled 
up to light and "the larger hope." More than any other longer 
poem of the century In Memoriam reflects the spiritual unrest of 
the age. Tennyson's answer to the questionings of the spirit out 
of his own experience and intuition gave comfort to multitudes 
of troubled men and women. This, together with the perfect 
music of the verse, has made In Memoriam widely popular. 

The Dramas. Besides the large body of varied verse for which 
Tennyson is known and loved in all English-speaking lands, he 
wrote seven plays, which, it must be said, have added little to 
his fame. These dramas are not without strong situations and 
noble lines, but they seem cold and remote as compared with the 
warmth and modernness of his other poetry; they lack action, 
humor, and attachment to the life of his time. The truth is, 
Tennyson was wanting in that dramatic power which is necessary 
to the vivid portrayal of individual character in a play; he had, 
moreover, no practical training in stage-craft. In spite of these 
limitations, however, several of his plays were, in the hands of 
competent actors, well received for a time at least; this was par- 
ticularly true of Becket, one of his historical dramas, which was 
acted with good effect by Sir Henry Irving. They are in reality 
closet dramas, more adapted to reading than to acting. The most 
noteworthy of the dramas are Queen Mary (1875), Harold (1876), 
Becket (1884) — an English historical trilogy — and The Foresters 
(1892). 

Literary Characteristics and Teaching. — In temperament Ten- 
nyson was aristocratic and thoroughly English; both his choice 
of subjects and his treatment of them show this. He preferred 
classic, mediaeval, "old, forgotten, far-off things," touched with 
romance; and he Anglicized them all. He was preeminently a 
national poet. When it comes to an aesthetic appreciation of 
Tennyson, the first and last thing to be said of him is that he was 
supremely artistic and that he consecrated himself to his art with 
unfaltering devotion, The most obvious characteristics of his 



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verse are harmony and beauty; it wins its way to the ear by its 
perfect harmony, and then to the imagination by its pictorial 
quality. It has the harmony and the beauty of flawless crafts- 
manship, but it has substance also: the intellectual, social, and 
religious ferment of the age is felt in Tennyson's poetry. 

Tennyson was, moreover, a close observer of nature, and he 
could put into words as no other one of our poets has done that 
indefinable emotion which comes to every delicately sensitive 
soul, a sort of dreamy and not unpleasing melancholy, out of the 
haze of an autumn landscape or the freshness of spring time or 
the luscious ripeness of summer. He colored his poetry with the 
romantic atmosphere of sea, sunset, moonrise, misty field and 
forest, as Turner did his canvas with the impalpable splendors 
of nature in her varied moods. Tennyson could also portray the 
simple beauty of the English countryside with realistic effect: 
the languorous music and the drowsy atmosphere of the ' 'Lotos 
Eaters" is almost oriental, while the homely simplicity of "Dora," 
"Enoch Arden," and parts of the "May Queen," shows the love 
of rustic life. 

Tennyson is a great teacher as well as a great poet. No one 
can read such poems as "The Palace of Art," "The Two Voices," 
"The Vision of Sin," and "The Ancient Sage," without receiving 
a decided moral and spiritual uplift. The imperative necessity 
for social service, if one would attain to fulness of life; the duty 
of following "the gleam," if one would, like Galahad, catch a 
vision of perfection ; the inward protest of a spiritual nature against 
the deadening tendencies of a rampant materialism; the recogni- 
tion of the cancerous workings of individual and social sins; and, 
above all, the inspiriting power of faith that has been struggled 
for and at last attained by "cleaving ever to the sunnier side of 
doubt" — these are some of the teachings, direct or indirect, con- 
tained in his poetry. One strain runs through his work clear as 
a flute note — the sovereign sense of law and love in the world, 
and the consequent obligation of men to live well-ordered lives, 
reverencing the past and conserving what is best in it, facing the 
future hopefully and helpfully — 



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Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
These three lead life to sovereign power. 
Yet not for power (power of herself 
Would come uncalled for), but to live by law, 
Acting the law we live by without fear; 
And because right is right, to follow right 
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence. 

ROBERT BROWNING (1812-1889) 

His Life. — Robert Browning, who ranks along with Tennyson among 
the Victorian poets, was born in Camberwell, a suburb of London, in 1812. 
His father, a clerk in the Bank of England, was a man of literary tastes 
and broad culture who loved books and art more than banking, though he 
made a success of his business. Browning's mother was a woman of artistic 
and religious sensibilities, fond of music, and in full sympathy with her 
son's poetic impulses. From both parents, indeed, the young poet received 
steady encouragement, but to his mother he was in temperament more 
closely akin. As the Brownings were Dissenters, Robert did not attend 
either of the great English universities; he studied at home under a tutor, 
read widely in his father's large library, went to a private school several 
years and to London University for a short while, and spent a great deal of 
time in the British Museum. To his father^ to the intellectual and artistic 
atmosphere of the home, and to his own tomnivorou| reading, Browning 
owed most of his education. By the time he was twelve he had written a 
large number of verses in the manner of Byron; a little later he became an 
ardent admirer of Shelley, a volume of whose poetry had come into his 
hands. He spent several months traveling in Russia, thought of preparing 
himself to enter the diplomatic service, returned to England and in 1835 
brought out his first considerable work, Paracelsus. With the publica- 
tion of this poem his career may be said to have begun, for it gained him 
recognition from prominent literary men. 

The next ten years of Browning's life were outwardly uneventful : he was 
writing plays and poems, but they did not bring him a fame which could be 
called national, nor did they fill his purse. In response to a request from 
Macready for a play, he wrote in 1837 Strafford, which was produced with 
some success. Other dramas followed, none of which, however, proved to 
be well adapted to the stage, though U A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" was re- 
ceived with considerable favor. Meanwhile Browning had visited Italy, 
the land which was to be his second home, and there prepared himself for 
writing his long, and to most readers, obscure poem, Sordello. In 1844 he 
met for the first time Miss Elizabeth Barrett, herself a much more famous 
poet at this time than Browning. In one of her poems Miss Barrett had 



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ROBERT BROWNING AS A YOUNG MAN 



paid a graceful compliment to Browning's poetry; he wrote thanking her 
and expressing admiration for her work. This led to a visit from him; a 
correspondence followed and other visits; for two years the letters and oc- 
casional calls continued. For a long time Miss Barrett had been an invalid 
confined to her room, the pet of an indulgent but ^elfish father; but the 
letters and conversations of the accomplished young poet brought variety 
and cheer into the secluded life of the invalid, with the result that she 
grew stronger and in 1846 agreed to marry him. As her father forbade 
the match, the lovers took matters into their own hands and were secretly 
married, after which they fled to Italy. With the exception of prolonged 
stays in Paris and several summers spent in England, the Brownings 
passed the fifteen years of their married life in Italy, mostly at Florence 
in the house Casa Guidi, known to readers of Mrs. Browning's poems. 

The happiness of those Italian years was rudely broken by the death of 
Mrs. Browning in 1861, and for a while Browning lost interest in his work 
and in the life about him. It had been a perfect union of congenial spirits; 
their home in the old city on the Arno was an ideal one for two poets to 
whom the literary associations and art treasures of Florence meant so 



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much. Gradually Browning recovered from his depression and for comfort 
turned to completing his great poem, The Ring and the Book, and to 
the education of their only child, Robert Barrett Browning. 

Returning to England to live, Browning came to be as the years went on 
a familiar figure in London society, for which his brilliant conversational 
powers and his interest in people peculiarly fitted him. By this time, too, 
he was getting a long delayed recognition from an increasing circle of cul- 
tured readers. Of independent fortune, he had cared comparatively little 
about the popularity of his poetry as measured by the financial success of 
his volumes, content to await the approval of competent critics. It is 
pleasing to note that America was quicker to recognize Browning's genius 
than England, even as it had Cariyle's. Browning's son had become 
an artist and was now living in Venice; at his house on the Grand Canal, 
the Palazzo Rezzonico, the poet died in 1889, and as England claimed his 
body, he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Upon the house in which he 
died the Venetians, grateful for his love of their country, put a memorial 
tablet with these lines of his: 

Open my heart and you will see 
Graved inside of it 'Italy.' 

His Personality. — Browning was always interested in human 
beings about him, and his mental curiosity was acute. Tennyson 
was something of a recluse; Browning loved society and was ever 
a welcome guest at teas and receptions. From his mother he had 
inherited an extreme sensibility which showed itself in his love 
of music, his deep religious feeling, and his almost feminine 
tenderness. His good health and his freedom from anxiety about 
money matters — he enjoyed a comfortable fortune by inheritance 
— helped to make him an optimist. Around him both in Italy 
and in England were gathered many congenial friends; to him 
from Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, came honorary degrees; 
and as time went on, praise almost fulsome was given him by 
numerous Browning societies, with whose members admiration 
for his poetry had grown into a cult. Browning was generally 
amused when an enthusiastic feminine worshiper would ask the 
meaning of some obscure passage, and with a wise smile and an 
inscrutable look he usually declined to enlighten her. His married 
life, as already indicated, was itself a poem. Healthy, buoyant, 



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virile and yet gentle, Browning richly deserves the tribute of his 
friend, Walter Savage Landor : 

No man has walked along our roads with step 
So active, so enquiring eye, or tongue 
So varied in discourse. 

His Works. — For the sake of convenience we may divide Brown- 
ing's poetry into three classes — Dramatic Lyrics, Dramatic Mono- 
logues, and Dramas Proper. All his work, whether it be lyric in 
form (as his short earlier pieces) or epic (as his masterpiece, The 
Ring and the Book), is essentially dramatic in spirit. Of the Dra- 
matic Lyrics a few of the best known are: "How They Brought 
the Good News from Ghent to Aix," "The Lost Leader," "Evelyn 
Hope," "A Toccata of Galuppi's," and "Saul." Of the Dramatic 
Monologues, the following are the most famous: "My Last/ 
Duchess," "The Last Ride Together," "Andrea Del Sarto," 
"The Bishop Orders his Tomb," "The Grammarian's Funeral," 
"Fra Lippo Lippi," "An Epistle of Karshish," "Cleon," "Abt* 
Vogler," "A Death in the Desert," "Cbilde Roland to the Dark 
Tower Came," and "Caliban upon Setebos." The Dramas Proper 
are Strafford, King Victor and King Charles, The Return of the 
Druses, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Colombe's Birthday, Luria, and 
A SouVs Tragedy (all written between 1837 and 1846). Pippa 
Passes (1841) is a long lyric and dramatic poem; Paracelsus 
(1835) and Sordello (1840) are prolonged dramatic monologues; 
the longest of Browning's poems, The Ring and the Book (1868), 
is a series of monologues. The poet called the collection of 
poems published between 1841 and 1846 Bells and Pomegran- 
ates, 1 and that of 1855, Men and Women. Though he continued 
writing up to his death in 1889 — his volume of poems named 
Asolando appearing that very year — Browning's best work was 
done by 1868. 

1 Browning thus explained this title: "I meant by the title to indicate 
an endeavour towards something like an alternation, or mixture, of music 
with discoursing, sound with sense, poetry with thought." — See Exodus, 
xxviii, 33-34. 



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The Dramatic Monologue. — The poetic form, known as the 
dramatic monologue, Browning used with brilliant success. In- 
deed, he may be called the originator and perfecter of this form. 
A dramatic monologue, as employed by Browning, is a speech by 
one person to another, so presented that the reader may infer 
what the reply or action of the person addressed is. The attitude 
of the reader of a monologue somewhat resembles that of a listener 
to a person talking over the telephone: the conversation of the 
man or woman at the other end may be guessed at by the listener. 
Thus, in "My Last Duchess' ' a proud and selfish duke is repre- 
sented as showing to an envoy, sent by a great nobleman to ar- 
range for the marriage of his daughter to the duke, the picture of 
the duke's last wife. From the duke's comments on the character 
of the dead duchess we gain a clear insight into the duke's own 
selfishness, the unselfish nature of the duchess, and the desire of 
the duke — delicately hinted to the envoy — that the new duchess, 
besides having a liberal dowry, should take warning from the fate 
of her predecessor. In ' 'Andrea Del Sarto" the great Italian 
artist by that name is talking to his beautiful but shallow wife, 
Lucrezia; we gather from what Andrea says that certain failures 
in his own career have been largely due to lack of sympathy on 
his wife's part and to her personal vanity. We also infer her 
replies and actions during the conversation. In "The Bishop 
Orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's Church," an old bishop of the 
Italian Renaissance period, on his deathbed, is directing his 
sons in regard to the handsome tomb he wants built for him; 
and in so doing he reveals his jealousy against a brother bishop, 
who has a finer monument, and his love of luxury. The poem 
conveys the sensuous atmosphere of the Renaissance in its wor- 
ship of art and learning. 

The monologues of Browning are exquisite pieces of art, intel- 
lectually clever and stimulating to the imagination. They have 
proved the most popular of his poems; but they demand of the 
reader alertness of mind and an unfettered fancy, if he would 
really enjoy them. Once understood, they invite repeated read- 
ings; there is no other poetic form so packed with thought and 



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suggestion. The dramatic monologue is an intensive character- 
study; it is a condensed drama. Some of these monologues have 
a lyric tone, so musical is the setting. "Saul," for instance, 
represents the young David playing and singing before King 
Saul until the evil spirit leaves the monarch. The shepherd 
musician, in an access of devotion, has a prophetic vision of the 
Christ, the outgrowth of the spiritual discovery that in God's 
universe "all's love, yet all's law." In "Abt Vogler" the musician, 
playing on the instrument of his invention, builds up in his imagina- 
tion a wonderful palace of music in which he communes with un- 
seen presences of all ages. Under the spell which music has cast 
over him, he exclaims : 

There never shall be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; 
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; 
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; 
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round. 

Our intuitions, our dreams of perfection, our inarticulate emotions 
in hearing great music, are evidences of the realities toward which 
we aspire and which we shall some day see. Thus Browning, in 
common with Tennyson, finds in "the lyric cry" of intuition an 
earnest of immortality. The student should patiently read the 
dramatic monologues, even if he neglects all the rest of Browning, 
for in them he is at his best. 

The Dramas Proper. — Browning wrote eight or nine dramas, 
some of which are simply dramatic poems cast in play form. 
Pippa Passes, for instance, is a beautiful dramatic idyl arranged 
in four scenes through which Pippa, the little silk-weaver of Asolo, 
runs like a golden thread. The theme of this poem is the uncon- 
scious influence of a radiant little girl upon certain individuals 
who hear her joyous and hopeful song one holiday as she passes 
by them. The redeeming power of youth and purity is illustrated 
in the poem. Several of Browning's plays have been acted — nota- 
bly, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Colombe's Birthday, In a Balcony, 
and Strafford, the historical drama — but with indifferent success. 



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"A Blot in the 'Scutcheon/ ' in particular, has several strik- 
ing situations which suit the stage; as a rule, however, the 
plays read better than they act. They are too inward, made 
up of long speeches dealing in argument or subtle exposition, 
lacking in action, and therefore better adapted to thoughtful, 
cultivated readers than to a popular audience. The action takes 
place in the minds of the characters; it is a movement of brain 
cells rather than of bodies on a stage. Being fond of spiritual 
themes, Browning analyzes and philosophizes instead of develop- 
ing plot and character through action. These dramas contain 
stretches of glorious poetry, and may be read again and again 
with increasing delight. 

The Ring and the Book. — The Ring and the Booh, finished in 
1868, is a poem of twenty thousand lines in twelve books, consist- 
ing of a series of monologues on a central theme. The work as a 
whole is in epic form and is twice as long as Paradise Lost. One 
day on a bookstall in Florence, Browning found an old yellow 
book, or pamphlet, containing an account of a famous trial at 
Rome in 1698 of one Count Guido for the murder of his young 
wife, Pompilia. From the evidence brought out at the trial 
Browning made his long poem, weaving it into a great "ring," 
by mixing the fine gold of his fancy with the crude ore of fact. 
The same story is told nine different times representing nine 
separate points of view; and so well does the poet manage the 
narrations that one does not weary at the repetition. The central 
figure of it all is Pompilia, the child wife of Guido, whom her 
husband in a fit of unfounded jealousy mortally wounds; before 
her death she recounts the pathetic story of her brief life. Pom- 
pilia is Browning's finest heroine; over against the blackness of 
her husband's guilty soul her own spirit shines like a star in the 
darkest night. Among the men the figure of the Pope, who pro- 
nounces judgment on Guido, looms large and impressive. 

Browning's Characteristics. — To reveal the workings of the 
human soul at crucial moments, to cause a man or woman to 
reflect in speech the changes, the growth, the decay, of ideals — 
that, m a sentence, is what Browning does in his poetry. That is 



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to say, he deals metaphysically and dramatically with his subject. 
He loves to choose a little incident, an insignificant situation, a 
glance, a chance meeting, and develop it into a crisis in a life. 
He believes in crucial moments. He is less of an artist than Tenny- 
son and less national in spirit; but he is more original, more vig- 
orous than Tennyson. As already intimated, Browning prefers 
Italian scenes and themes, though he treats them with the moral 
passion of a Puritan. He thinks like lightning, and accordingly 
he takes quick leaps; he assumes intellect in his readers; his 
method is dynamic. He did not mean that his poetry should be 
read after a full meal to promote digestion; it is rather a tonic to 
be taken before meals. Undoubtedly, in order to appreciate 
Browning in his long flights both mental alertness and considerable 
culture are necessary: he does not "descend to meet," but compli-i 
ments his reader by taxing his brain. 

Too much has been made of Browning's obscurity: he leaves 
gaps for you to fill in; makes you, as it were, a partner in his act 
of creation, dramatically assuming that you are present at a 
given scene; he leaves out relative pronouns and other particles 
in his headlong thinking. But one will soon get used to this 
and feel after a while the exhilaration of thinking the poet's thought 
along with him. One should begin with certain of the short dra- 
matic lyrics already mentioned, such as "Evelyn Hope," visualiz- 
ing the scene and so following the action; then, "My Last 
Duchess" and the longer monologues will unfold themselves 
easily. Once used to this energizing poetry, the reader will no 
more weary of Browning than he would of Shakespeare. The 
earliest and latest of his writing is his obscurest, and much of 
this the beginner would do well to omit. 

Browning's Message. — Browning is more burdened with a 
message than any other Victorian poet. Like Tennyson, he values 
love as the greatest thing in the world; unlike Tennyson, he sub- 
ordinates law to the individual will. Browning arouses the will 
to action as with a clarion call to battle in such lines as these, 
which every youth should memorize and often repeat: 



404 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Then, welcome each rebuff 
That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go I 
Be our joys three parts pain! 
Strive, and hold cheap the strain; 
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never 
grudge the throe ! 

Moreover, he values effort more than attainment, and even out 
of apparent failure he creates a hope. "What's come to perfec- 
tion perishes," he declares, holding that aspiration, not content- 
ment, is the proper attitude of mind: 

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
Or what's a heaven for? 

His courage, faith, and buoyant optimism leave no room for doubt 
in his soul. 1 'Steeped to the finger-tips in radiant hope," Browning 
held that the purpose of living is growth through spiritual evolu- 
tion, and the gist of his message may be found in his own words : 

I count life just a stuff 

To try the soul's strength on, educe the man. 
Who keeps one end in view makes all things serve 
As with the body — he who hurls a lance 
Or heaps up stone on stone, shows strength alike; 
So must I seize and task all means to prove 
And show this soul of mine. 

The last year of his life Browning wrote the following lines, which 
we may fitly regard as a summary of his own life and teaching: 

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, 

Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, 

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake. 

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861) 

Her Life. — By general consent Mrs. Browning holds first place among the 
poetesses of England. Elizabeth Barrett was born near Durham in 1806, 
daughter of a country gentleman. Her girlhood was spent in Herefordshire 



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among the Malvern Hills; at the age of fifteen she injured her spine while 
out horseback-riding, from the results of which she never fully recovered. 
The family moved to London in 1835, where she lived as an invalid in her 
father's house until her marriage to Robert Browning in 1846. Educated 
at home, Miss Barrett early showed great proficiency in Greek, acquiring 
a deep and varied culture. Mention has already been made of her meeting 
with Browning and her secret marriage, due to her father's selfish opposi- 
tion; he did not, indeed, wish any of his children to marry, and never for- 
gave his poet-daughter. The last fifteen years of Mrs. Browning's life 
were spent happily in Florence, where she lies buried in the Protestant 
cemetery. 

Her Works. — Miss Barrett was famous as a poet long before 
her future husband was widely known, her first important poems 
appearing in 1838; in 1844 a collected edition of her poems was 
published, which fully established her reputation. Mrs. Browning's 
strongest work was inspired by social problems, chiefly the Italian 
struggle for liberty and child labor, and by love. Casa Guidi 
Windows (1851), named after the Brownings' home in Florence, 
is a plea for Italian independence and unity, which was to be 
realized in 1870; The Cry of the Children is a protest against the 
employment of young children in factories; Aurora Leigh (1856), 
Mrs. Browning's longest work, is a novel in verse, the hero of which 
is a young social reformer; the heroine is strongly suggestive of 
Mrs. Browning herself. As time goes on, however, it is coming 
to be felt that the greatest work of this beautiful and sensitive 
soul is to be found in Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), a series 
of exquisite love-poems celebrating the perfect union of herself 
and Robert Browning. Though written during the months of 
their courtship, she did not show them to her husband until some- 
time after their marriage; and when she did publish them, she 
half-disclaimed responsibility by her choice of a title. The first, 
and one of the most lovely, of the Sonnets from the Portuguese is 
this : 

I thought once how Theocritus had sung 

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, 

Who each one in a gracious hand appears 

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young: 



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ENGLISH LITERATURE 



And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, 

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, 

The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, 

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung 

A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware, 

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move 

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair; 

And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, — 

"Guess now who holds thee?" "Death," I said. But there 

The silver answer rang, — "Not Death, but Love." 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882).— Mention was made in 
connection with Ruskin of that little group of artists and poets 
known as the "Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood." 1 Prominent among 
these was Rossetti, poet and artist, who was born in London in 
1828, son of an Italian exile. He early showed a decided talent 
for painting; indeed, he long hesitated between poetry and paint- 
ing in the choice of his life work, and ended by putting much of 
the coloring of the canvas into his poetry. Among his youthful 
poems is "The Blessed Damozel," on which, in the popular mind, 
his fame chiefly rests. There was something original, not to say 
bold, in the idea that a beautiful woman, still possessing the fascina- 
tion of fleshly charm, should be leaning over "the gold bar of heav- 
en," wistfully awaiting her earthly lover. It was a curious mixture 
of "worldliness" and "other-worldliness," to be sure; but it made a 
delicately sensuous appeal to those who loved the rich coloring 
of the madonnas and other pictures in the mediaeval church. 
In 1860 Rossetti married a lovely English girl who had much of 
the ethereal beauty of his own poetic women; in two years she 
died, and in his despairing grief he buried with ner a manu- 
script of poems. In 1870, at the urgent solicitation of his 
friends, the little volume was taken from her grave and published; 
but Rossetti never fully recovered from the shock of his wife's 
death. 



x The professed aim of these young enthusiasts was to deal with remote 
subjects of art in a pure, less conventional manner than, in their opinion, 
had prevailed since Raphael. They wished to return to the Pre-Raphael- 
ite simplicity or realism. 



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He wrote many other poems of a ballad nature, such as "A 
Last Confession," "Sister Helen," and "Rose Mary," full of mystic 
beauty. The languorous loveliness of his women is the same that 
we see in the paintings of his brother artists, Holman Hunt and 
Bume-Jones. Never before had there been such a mingling of 
palette and poetry. The greatest, as well as the longest, achieve- 
ment of Rossetti is his series of one hundred and one sonnets called 
The House of Life, all perfect in finish and in melody. They form 
with Shakespeare's and Mrs. Browning's cycles the third notable 
sonnet-series in our literature. 

Rossetti's sister, CHRISTINA ROSSETTI, was hardly less gifted 
as a poet than her brother, and deserves to rank along with Mrs. 
Browning in lyric genius. 

William Morris (1834-1896).— Another Pre-Raphaelite, a 
friend and in a sense a disciple of Rossetti, is William Morris, 
poet, artist, and socialist. Morris was educated at Oxford, where 
he became interested in mediaeval art and literature. Fortunately, 
he had wealth, and so was able to indulge his taste for art and his 
passion for reform. He embraced the social program of Carlyle 
and Ruskin, but he had more practical ability than either of these. 
In 1860 Morris organized a company for house and church decora- 
tion, and managed the enterprise with such conspicuous success 
that he profoundly influenced the public taste of his time. The 
tone of decorative art in England was vastly improved; beautiful 
furniture, rugs, stained-glass windows, curtains, and mural paint- 
ing, are some of the results of Morris's crusade. He became an 
active socialist of the aesthetic type; he vigorously worked to 
make the world of the workingman more interesting and more 
picturesque, and to counteract, by spreading the gospel of beauty, 
the deadening commercialism of the time. Six years before his 
death Morris established the Kelmscott Press, from which he 
sent forth books printed in type and bound in decorations of 
his own artistic designing. 

William Morris wrote a large amount of poetry on mediaeval 
and classic themes, treated in a romantic way. The Defence of 



408 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Queen Guenevere (1858) deals with the old Arthurian material in a 
quaintly colored style, with its long swinging meter, but it lacks 
the human interest of Tennyson's handling of the same matter. 
In The Life and Death of Jason (1867) Morris works over the old 
Greek legend. The Earthly Paradise (1868-1870) — a sort of ro- 
mantic Canterbury Tales, in which twenty-four ancient and me- 
diaeval stories are strung together — is perhaps his greatest work. 
It is a land of enchantment to which we are introduced by this 
"singer of an empty day," — as Morris calls himself — far removed 
from the storm and stress of our real world. But even in this 
golden paradise we catch an echo of human conflict, which the 
poet would fain forget, but cannot. Sigurd the Volsung (1876) is 
an epic poem on the old Icelandic legends, of which Morris was 
an enthusiastic student. The poetry of William Morris has no 
purposefulness, being singularly remote from life. He loved 
beauty, as Keats did, for beauty's sake: 

Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, 
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight? 
Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme 
Beats with light wings against the ivory gate, 
Telling a tale not too importunate 
To those who in the sleepy region stay, 
Lulled by the singer of an empty day. 

Charles Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909). — Born the same 
year in which Queen Victoria came to the throne, Swinburne 
lived through her long reign and almost through the reign of 
Edward VII, dying in 1909. He was educated at Eton and at 
Balliol College, Oxford, and spent his life in or near London as 
a devoted man of letters. But for his liberal opinions on politics 
and religion, Swinburne would doubtless have succeeded Tenny- 
son as Poet Laureate; certainly since the death of Tennyson he has 
been the foremost English poet, though never close to the heart 
of the nation. He is the last of the Pre-Raphaelite poets, but 
different from the others in that he gave himself exclusively to 
literature. He, with the rest of that brotherhood, owed much to 



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the great romantic poets Blake, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, 
carrying on their traditions in the worship of pure beauty. 

Swinburne's voluminous works fall into three general divisions — 
Dramas, Lyrics, and Literary Criticism. His first considerable 
work was Atalanta in Calydon (1865), a play modeled upon the 
Greek drama, dedicated to the memory of Walter Savage Landor, 
whom Swinburne ardently admired. This drama exhibits the 
color and metrical harmony of which Swinburne is a master: the 
choral odes are exceedingly beautiful. Although he wrote nine or 
ten other dramas — among them a trilogy on Mary, Queen of 
Scots, — it is doubtful whether he ever surpassed his first great 
effort. In 1866 the volume called Poems and Ballads came out 
and created a sensation: many censured the author for the pagan 
tone of certain poems andjforJ)he sensual, suggestion of others; 
more praised the poet for his marvelous metrical effects and his 
verbal melody. The over-sensuous atmosphere of some of this 
earlier poetry was tempered in his maturer work, but many of 
these pieces represent the poet at his best, for he is essentially 
lyric. 

Swinburne is most delightful as the poet of nature and of child- 
hood: he casts over the reader the spell of the sea, of the moun- 
tains, of the woods, of the stars, with a mystic charm that comes 
from the long and deep communion with the varying moods of 
nature. The innocence and the beauty of childhood shine through 
certain of his poems, for he loved children, and he rivals Blake in 
voicing the ineffable charm of childhood. He is not a poet of man 
in the broad sense; he is too bookish for that. He is, moreover, a 
wordy poet, with, as Matthew Arnold pointed out, a fatal fluency: 
ideas are lost in the bewildering and shimmering welter of words. 
Consequently, as a critic he is intemperate ; his prose writings — on 
Victor Hugo and Shakespeare, for instance — while not without 
critical acumen, are rhapsodies rather than sane pieces of appreci- 
ation. But when it comes to musical lines, high haunting melodies, 
and the widest metrical range in English literature, Swinburne 
compels admiration. Take these lines addressed to Hesperia 
(The Western Land, Italy and Spain) as a sample: 



410 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



From the bountiful infinite west, from the happy memorial places, 

Full of the stately repose and the lordly delight of the dead, 
Where the fortunate islands are lit with the light of ineffable faces, 

And the sound of a sea without wind is about them, and sunset is red, 
Come back to redeem and release me from love that recalls and represses, 

That cleaves to my flesh as a flame, till the serpent has eaten his fill; 
From the bitter delights of the dark, and the feverish, the furtive caresses 

That murder the youth in a man or ever his heart have its will. 

Other Poets. — A number of minor poets have sung or are sing- 
ing in this most recent period of our literature. To mention them 
all would extend the present work too far; besides, the places of 
some of these poets are not yet fixed, and any attempt at appreci- 
ation would be premature. 

Matthew Arnold's friend ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH (1819-1861) 
was, like Arnold, a poet of doubt and disillusion, who wrote some 
verse of a high order reflecting the spiritual unrest of the mid- 
nineteenth century. A few of his shorter poems — "Qua Cursum 
Ventus," "Venit Hesperus," and "Say Not the Struggle Naught 
Availeth" — have grown in popularity because of their clear lyric 
quality and hopeful tone. The spirit of Clough's poetry is the 
same as that of Arnold, but his art is not as fine. It is likely, 
indeed, that he will be better known to later times through 
Arnold's elegy, "Thyrsis," than through his own verse. 

EDWARD FITZGERALD (1809-1883) is famous because of his 
admirable translation, or adaptation, of the Persian poem in 
quatrains, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. 

Of more recent poets, we may choose one for a few words of 
comment. STEPHEN PHILLIPS (1868—) is the author of several 
poetic dramas of rare sweetness and distinction on ancient and 
mediaeval themes: Paolo and Francesca, Ulysses, Nero. The 
verse of Phillips at its best is somewhat reminiscent of Milton and 
Tennyson, and of the lyric moods of the great Elizabethans, all 
of whom he has diligently studied. His later work. has not sur- 
passed the earlier, which in Marpessa and other lyric-dramatic 
poems gave such high hopes of another master singer. The truth 
is, there is a lull in the progress of poetry. There are many minor 



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411 



singers, but no great voice is heard. And yet we may confidently 
predict that in good time other great seers will continue that 
ministry of poetry, which is so inspiring a part of the glorious 
heritage of our English-speaking race. 

III. THE NOVELISTS 

We have already traced the history of the English novel from 
Richardson through Sir Walter Scott. We have noted the several 
kinds of novels — domestic, society, romantic or historical; and we 
have seen that two tendencies run through the history of our prose 
fiction — the one toward idealism, the other toward realism. By 
the middle of the nineteenth century the novel had become the 
most popular form of literature, displacing the drama and causing 
the old interest in poetry and the essay to weaken. Thus it came 
about by the end of the century that the term "literature" was 
almost synonymous with "novel." 

The novel, like the drama in the Elizabethan Age, took all life 
for its province : every kind of human activity came to be reflected 
in novels and short stories. The writers of novels and short stories, 
whose name is legion, filled the magazines with their literary wares 
for the busy reader, the idle reader, and the thoughtful reader. 
All sorts of problems came to be discussed, abuses exposed, and 
reforms advocated. Thus there grew up the social-reform novel, 
the psychological or motive-novel, and other species, adapted in 
one way or another to our complex modern life. 

Since the days of Scott and his historical, novels, the three most 
prominent novelists in English literature have been Dickens, 
Thackeray, and George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). Their works 
have long been classics. Other great writers of prose fiction in 
the Victorian Era are Meredith, Hardy, Stevenson, and Kipling. 
Then come a number of minor novelists — Bulwer-Lytton, Trol- 
lope, Bronte, Reade, Wilkie Collins, Kingsley, and Blackmore. 
These we will now consider in order, giving most space to Dickens, 
Thackeray, Eliot, and Stevenson. 



412 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 




CHARLES DICKENS AS A YOUNG MAN 
From the Maclise portrait 



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413 



CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) 

His Life. — Charles Dickens was born in 1812 at Portsea, Hampshire, 
where his father was a clerk in the navy yard. The family moved not 
long afterward to Chatham, and finally to London, where they settled in 
a poor quarter of the city. The elder Dickens, of whom Mr. Micawber in 
David Copperjield is a picture, was always in debt; on this account he had 
to spend some time in the old Marshalsea prison. During these years of 
deep poverty Charles earned six shillings a week by pasting labels on bot- 
tles in a blacking factory. After his father was released from prison, 
Dickens was sent to school for three years; then, at the age of fifteen, he 
entered a lawyer's office, and in 1828 he became a newspaper reporter. 
From his early childhood he was familiar with the London streets, where 
much of his education was obtained, and from which the material for his 
future novels was to come. 

So well had Dickens succeeded at his vocation, that in a few years he 
was considered one of the best reporters in the gallery of the House of Com- 
mons. Meanwhile he had written certain humorous sketches which were 
published in the Monthly Magazine and the Chronicle over the pen name 
of "Boz." These were followed by a series known to us now as the Pick- 
wick Papers. The fame and fortune of the young writer were made; hence- 
forth he gave himself to writing novels. He was in great demand as a reader 
and lecturer and as a pleader for philanthropic movements all over Great 
Britain. As he had considerable dramatic ability and had once thought 
of becoming an actor, he sometimes took part in amateur theatricals with 
marked success. In 1842 Dickens paid his first visit to America, reading 
in various cities and being acclaimed as the most popular of literary visitors. 
Twenty-five years later he came again and was given a royal welcome; 
his hosts generously forgot his caustic criticisms of American life after 
his first visit. Worn out by the strain of a wonderfully busy life — really a 
victim to his own popularity — Dickens died in 1870 at the age of fifty-eight, 
and was buried in Westminster Abbey. 

His Personality. — Carlyle's word-picture of Dickens is vivid: 
" Clear, blue, intelligent eyes, eyebrows that he arches amazingly, 
large, protrusive, rather loose mouth, a face of most extreme mo- 
bility, which he shuttles about — eyebrows, eyes, mouth and all — 
in a very singular manner while speaking * * * * . For the rest, a 
quiet, shrewd-looking little fellow, who seems to guess pretty 
well what he is and what others are." 

Sympathy, cheerfulness, and courage — these are leading quali- 
ties in the personality of Dickens. His love went out to the world, 



414 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



especially to that submerged world of London out of which he 
had risen. Their oddities of character he viewed with kindly 
humor; their sorrows, with a fellow-feeling. Children he loved, 
and was loved by them in return. Over his characters he laughed 
and wept as he was creating them. The family often heard explo- 
sions of mirth in his room, and knew that he was having a good 
time with his characters. He was a man of great sensibility; 
sentiment sometimes got the better of his judgment. He had his 
little vanities; such, for instance, as a fondness for flashy clothes, 
a love for theatrical effect, a too feverish ambition. He had 
immense vitality, and he was, therefore, capable of severe and 
long-sustained labor. He literally killed himself working for good 
causes. His great heart, which sorrowed for the oppressed and 
sympathized with childhood, has made Dickens the most deeply 
loved personally of all English novelists. 

The Novels. — Dickens wrote thirteen or fourteen novels, be- 
sides a number of Christmas stories, sketches, travel-notes, and A 
Child's History of England. He was, moreover, during this time 
editor of two or three papers, among them a popular magazine 
called All the Year Round. His first long book, Pickwick Papers, 
is made up of a series of articles, with comic illustrations, setting 
forth the adventures of a company of cockney clubmen. The 
book has over fifty different situations, most of them exceedingly 
amusing, and about three hundred and fifty characters. Pick- 
wick Papers was finished in 1837, when Dickens was twenty-five. 
It set all London to laughing. The public called for more, and 
the young author went to work with greater seriousness of purpose 
to construct more definite plots. His next book, Oliver Twist 

(1838) , was a study of life among the criminal class, not simply 
to entertain but to expose conditions with a view to reform. 
Other novels followed in rapid succession: Nicholas Nickleby 

(1839) , Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Pudge (1841), Martin 
Chuzzlewit (1843), Dombey and Son (1848), David Copperfield 
(1850), Bleak House (1853), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit 
(1857), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), The Uncommercial Traveller 
and Great Expectations (1861), Our Mutual Friend (1865), and the 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 415 

unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Brood. Considering the 
length of a Dickens novel and the author's numerous engagements, 
this is a surprisingly large output. 

Dickens's Philanthropic Purpose. — Aside from mere entertain- 
ment and sheer delight in creating plots and characters, Dickens 
had something of philan- 
thropic and moral purpose 
in his strongest novels. 
Hence the name, "human- 
itarian novel" has been 
applied to his works. He 
sought to reveal the pover- 
ty and vice of the lowest 
class of London society, in 
particular, and to appeal 
to the conscience of the 
English public for the re- 
lief of the downtrodden 
and oppressed. Bad laws, 
indifference, and wilful 
neglect, he thought, were 
responsible. Oliver Twist 

is the history of a victim pointed out as the original old 
of such conditions as were curiosity shop 

to be found in the work- 
houses of the day ; Nicholas Nickleby exposes the abuses in private 
schools; Bleak House has to do with the delays of the law in 
chancery courts; Little Dorrit shows the injustice of debtors' 
prisons; Old Curiosity Shop leads us through prisons and pawn- 
shops. Against these social wrongs Dickens is a pleader always 
on the side of the poor. Other novels have an ethical purpose : 
in Dombey and Son the sin of pride and its consequences are 
shown us; in Martin Chuzzlewit hypocrisy and selfishness are illus- 
trated; and in the Christmas stories the text is, "Charity never 
faileth." Sentimentalist as he was, it cannot be doubted that 
Dickens rendered a very distinct service for social betterment. 




416 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



His Characteristics as a Novelist. — Dickens was, first of all, a 
close observer. He had an eye for dramatic incidents and situa- 
tions. Most of his novels were written out of personal observa- 
tion; he knew the life of the lower middle class better than any 
other novelist, and he is their champion. He had, furthermore, a 
lively imagination: sometimes it almost runs away with him, as 
he brings in character after character and scene after scene. He 
is a good story-teller, weaves an interesting plot out of unpromis- 
ing material, and strikes off picturesque phrases and epithets. 
He is the most quotable of our great novelists. In the next place, 
Dickens had a keen eye for oddities of character, or "humors," 
as Ben Jonson called them. These eccentricities are enlarged until 
the characters become caricatures, such as we see in the pictures 
of our comic papers. They often appear like mere puppets worked 
by wires which the author is manipulating. But we may be sure 
that Dickens is thoroughly enjoying the show. These comic 
peculiarities — Uriah Heep's oily "humbleness," Barkis's "willing- 
ness," Micawber's big talk and his waiting for something "to 
turn up," Captain Cuttle's hook, Carker's teeth, — give many of 
his people an air of grotesque exaggeration; they may suggest 
real persons, though far from reality. Dickens's humor and 
pathos often run riot, the fun passing into broad farce and the 
sentiment lapsing into sentimentality. His pathos is at its best 
when he is dealing with children, even though they are sometimes 
too good, too pale and angelic. Little Nell is an immortal creation 
and the account of her death and burial an exquisite piece of 
prose. Dickens tenderly loved children, and in his portrayal of 
their joys and sorrows and in his pictures of Christmas he made 
a welcome contribution to our literature. He had a big heart. 

Many regard David Copperfield as Dickens's masterpiece; it 
is partly an autobiography, and is, therefore, more personal than 
his other books. In the two historical novels, A Tale of Two 
Cities and Barnaby Rudge, we find greater dignity of style than in 
much of Dickens's other work. This is particularly true of A Tale 
of Two Cities, which is a story of the French Revolution, with 
London and Paris as the centers of interest. In this book Dickens, 



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417 



true to his ethical instinct, "preaches a sermon on the sublime 
text, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay clown 
his life for his friends.' " 1 Dickens's style is essentially journalistic 
of the best type; it reflects his dramatic temperament, which 
shows itself at times as decidedly melodramatic. Every young 
student should early make the acquaintance of the people of 
Dickensland. 

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811-1863) 

His Life. — Thackeray was born in 1811 in Calcutta, where his father was 
in the service of the East India Company. When he was five years old 
his father died; soon after this the boy was sent to England to live with 
an aunt. Meanwhile his mother married in India, and did not return to 
England until 1821. At eleven he entered the famous old Charterhouse 
School in London, where Addison and Steele received their early training. 
Here he remained six years. Many of Thackeray's experiences at the Char- 
terhouse are reflected in Pendennis. Two years were passed at Trinity 
College, Cambridge, where enduring friendships were forme" 1 with Tenny- 
son, Fitzgerald, Kinglake, and others. At the University the future nov- 
elist read widely in the eighteenth century writers, showing a special pref- 
erence for Fielding, whom his own works sometimes suggest. 

After leaving Cambridge Thackeray traveled on the continent, then stud- 
ied law in London; as law was not to his taste, he turned to journalism. 
This change in profession was due in part, however, to necessity; for the 
small fortune left him by his father had been lost through bad investments 
and by gambling ventures at fashionable continental resorts. As a news- 
paper correspondent and illustrator of comic periodicals he was successful; 
this success led to the writing of various sketches of a semi-humorous char- 
acter, many of which were contributed to the London Punch. In 1847 he 
began Vanity Fair, published the next year in monthly parts after being 
refused by a magazine. It is interesting to note that as a struggling young 
artist he had called on Dickens, even then well known, and had asked to be 
allowed to illustrate Pickwick Papers. Dickens received him cordially 
but declined to engage him. It was just as well, indeed, for Thackeray 
was original enough to rival, not to reflect, his popular contemporary. 

With the publication of Vanity Fair Thackeray's reputation was estab- 
lished. Other novels followed; his fame steadily grew; he was invited to 
lecture in various parts of Great Britain. Drawing on his large fund of 
knowledge of eighteenth-century literature, he wrote with loving care a 



1 Cross: Development of the English Novel, p. 188. 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 




WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 



series of lectures on The English Humourists, which he delivered before 
delighted audiences in his own country and in the United States. He first 
visited us in 1852; three years later he came again, giving this time his lec- 
tures on The Four Georges. During these visits he made many friends in 
America, to whom after his return to England he wrote some of his most 
charming letters. His greatest novels had now been written; The Virgin- 
ians, which appeared in 1858, showed a distinct falling off in vigor and origi- 
nality. From this time on Thackeray gave himself largely to writing 
sketches and editing the Cornhill Magazine. For several years he had been 
in declining health, so that when the end came in 1863 it was not unex- 
pected. His grave is in Kensal Green Cemetery, London. 

His Personality. — Thackeray was personally a lovable man. 
His kindliness of heart was dashed with the spice of playful humor. 
He knew much of the world of men — a clubman, a delightful 
guest, a charming host, and a genial companion, with a touch of 
the Bohemian in his temperament. Against his inherent lazi- 
ness — his fondness for loafing — he struggled hard and succeeded 



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419 



in doing an immense amount of work. His devotion to his wife, 
for years hopelessly deranged, is one of the most striking evidences 
of his brave and beautiful spirit. "He had many fine qualities," 
said Carlyle, "no guile or malice against any mortal, a big mass 
of a soul, but not strong in proportion; a beautiful vein of genius 
lay struggling about him." If Thackeray had a weakness, it 
was, as Leslie Stephen remarks, "the excess of sensibility of a 
strongly artistic temperament." 

The Novels. — Thackeray's earlier work is a group of humorous 
sketches — The Yellowplush Papers, Parish Sketchbook, Irish 
Sketchbook, Book of Snobs, — and the picaresque novel, Barry 
Lyndon, modeled on Fielding's Jonathan Wild. Most of these 
writings were contributions to magazines. With the publication 
in 1848 of Vanity Fair, Thackeray's career as a novelist begins. 
He wrote in all five novels: Vanity Fair (1848), Pendennis (1849), 
Henry Esmond (1852), The Newcomes (1855), The Virginians 
(1858). 

Vanity Fair is a satire on upper middle-class London society 
in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Taking the 
title of his book from Pilgrim's Progress, Thackeray exposes the 
ambitions, the follies, the evil, the good, of dwellers in that region 
of lights and shadows. He pretends to be the master of a show 
and takes the liberty of stepping out before the curtain between 
the scenes to comment on the performance. It is an uncommonly 
interesting performance, too. Becky Sharp, clever, unprincipled, 
is the adventuress about whose fortunes the chief interest centers. 
Contrasted with her is the amiable, almost provokingly good, 
Amelia Sedley; attached to Amelia and faithful to the end is the 
honest, good-natured Dobbin. Vanity Fair is one of the most 
dramatic novels in English fiction: the incidents and situations 
are so carefully prepared for, that they have the cumulative 
effect of tragic crises. It would be hard to find a more striking 
catastrophe than Rawdon Crawley's attack on Lord Steyne in 
the fifty-third chapter of Vanity Fair: no wonder Thackeray 
exclaimed one day, with pardonable egotism, "What a genius I 
was when I wrote that chapter!" 



420 ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Henry Esmond is one of the great historical novels in our litera- 
ture; and yet so realistic is the setting and so human are the char- 
acters, that we almost forget that the author is dealing with scenes 
and people in a long vanished age. He had made himself wonder- 
fully familiar with the social life of the Queen Anne period: Dick 
Steele and Joseph Addison are brought in naturally, and the 
Spectator is imitated to perfection. Thackeray loves Dick Steele, 
for in temperament he was partly akin to the genial essayist 
and clubman. In the character of Henry Esmond, however, he 
has reflected his own noblest traits. High-minded and true, this 
noble hero is worthy of the love of Lady Castlewood, the novelist's 
ideal of womanly grace and devotion. Over against the picture 
of her lofty womanhood is the brilliant sketch of her daughter 
Beatrix, selfish, ambitious, and withal perilously beautiful. All 
things considered, Henry Esmond is the greatest book Thackeray 
ever wrote. Aside from itfe purely literary value, it is a standing 
refutation of the glib remark, too often heard, that this great 
novelist is essentially cynical. 

The two novels, Pendennis and The Newcomes, have something 
of the writer's own experience in them. Pendennis a mixture of 
good and bad, reminds us of Fielding's Tom Jones, whom Thack- 
eray had in mind, though Thackeray's portrayal is not as baldly 
realistic as the older novelist's. The Newcomes is a sequel to 
Pendennis, as The Virginians is to Henry Esmond. Colonel New- 
come is a lovable character, with whom we are sorry to part, 
even as Thackeray was; for, after associating through many pages 
with this old-fashioned gentleman and tender-hearted soldier, 
we are ready to believe the report that Thackeray came from his 
workroom one day sobbing out, "I have killed Colonel Newcome!" 
The Virginians is more valuable as a picture of colonial life in 
Virginia than for the plot, which is comparatively weak. 

The Essays (Lectures) of Thackeray. — The two series of charac- 
ter studies, The English Humourists and The Four Georges, are ap- 
preciative essays with a delightful personal flavor. In these essays, 
written with an audience in view, Thackeray takes the hearer 
or reader into his confidence and simply chats on about Steele 



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421 



or Goldsmith or Swift, or about the tribe of the Georges. He tries 
to give you his own impression rather than to be judicially critical, 
and you accordingly carry away from the reading a clear notion 
of Thackeray the genial converser. Since Charles Lamb no Eng- 
lish writer had talked more charmingly in essay form. 

Characteristics as a Novelist. — Thackeray was an observer and 
depicter of life in the upper middle class of English society. He 
was not a social reformer in the sense that Dickens was, but rather 
a social satirist, setting forth in a sort of comedy of manners life 
as he saw it, which was neither heroic nor sordid. By instinct 
and by training Thackeray was a man of the world, gifted with 
keen sensibilities, and yet distrustful of sentimental display. He 
loved Dickens the man, but he quarreled with Dickens's art "a 
thousand and a thousand times," he said. Thackeray's art is 
essentially intellectual, Dickens's art more emotional; the one 
appeals in general more to the head, the other to the heart. Hence, 
more culture is required to understand Thackeray; and so he has 
never been as widely loved as his colleague. His first two novels, 
Vanity Fair and Pendennis, are more coldly realistic than the 
others; from Vanity Fair, in particular, has come the impression 
that Thackeray is cynical. In these two books he followed Field- 
ing, giant humorist of the eighteenth century; in Henry Esmond, 
The Newcomes, and The Virginians, he deals more in sentiment. 
His later aim, says Professor Cross, was "to portray great and 
commanding goodness of heart in characters like Ethel, and Col- 
onel Newcome, Colonel Esmond, and Harry Warrington; and by 
means of them to draw attention away from worldly meanness." 1 
These novels, like the last plays of Shakespeare, make much of 
forgiveness, reconciliation, and the sacredness of friendship. The 
attitude of detachment, so often seen in Thackeray's half-ironical 
play with the characters in his earlier work, changes to one of 
sympathy in the later novels; and we rise from the reading of 
The Newcomes with the feeling that the man who wrote this book 
had a big heart. In the last analysis Thackeray, too, is a great 
moralist. 



K^ross : Development of the English Novel, p. 206. 



422 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 




GEORGE ELIOT 



GEORGE ELIOT (MARY ANN EVANS) (1819-1880) 

Her Life. — Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans, generally known as George 
Eliot, was born in Warwickshire, Shakespeare's county, in 1819, daughter 
of a land steward. Her ancestry belonged to the farmer class, people of 
devout principles and solid common-sense. Miss Evans was sent to neigh- 
boring private schools, but at fifteen, because of the death of her mother, 
she had to leave school to become housekeeper for her father and the other 
children. She found time, however, to continue her studies, learning Ger- 
man, Italian, Latin, Greek, and later, Hebrew, besides reading widely in 
English literature and in science and philosophy. A friendship between her- 
self and a cultured family near her home named Bray led Miss Evans to 
accept more liberal religious views than those held by her own family; 
but as long as her father lived she outwardly conformed, except for a brief 
interval, to his wishes in the matter of church attendance. After his 
death, in 1849, she went with the Brays to the continent, where she spent 
about a year in study and travel. Soon after her return she became a regu- 
lar contributor to the Westminster Review, and in 1851 assistant editor. 



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423 



This marks a turning point in George Eliot's life; for in London she met 
such intellectual men as Herbert Spencer and George Henry Lewes, and 
through them there opened for her a new field of endeavor. 

Lewes, philosopher and brilliant critic, urged Miss Evans to write a novel; 
the result was Amos Barton, which was published in Blackwood' s Magazine 
in 1856. The success of this and other stories was so great that George 
Eliot, as she now called herself, gave herself regularly to novel- writing; 
her first great book, Adam Bede, appeared in 1859. By this time her iden- 
tity was generally well-known, though she retained her pen name upon the 
title-pages of the rest of her works. She and Lewes, with whom she had 
formed a union in 1854, 1 lived in and near London, and about them gathered 
a circle of distinguished writers. Frequent trips were made to the conti- 
nent, particularly to Italy, where she prepared herself for writing other 
novels. Lewes died in 1878; two years later she married John W. Cross, a 
New York and London banker, a devoted friend of George Henry Lewes and 
herself, and later her biographer. In December of the same year, 1880, 
George Eliot died, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery, overlooking 
London. On the simple monument over her grave, which is next to that of 
Lewes, her inspirer and guide, are these words from her own great poem, 
"The Choir Invisible": 

Of those immortal dead, who live again 
In minds made better by their presence. 

Her Personality. — Of George Eliot as she appeared in her 
London home a prominent friend and visitor said: "Although 
her features were heavy and not well proportioned, all was for- 
gotten when that majestic head bent slowly down, and the eyes 
were lit up with a penetrating and lively gaze. She appeared much 
greater than her books. Her ability seemed to shrink beside her 
moral grandeur." With her somewhat masculine mind and 
features was combined a sensibility distinctly feminine. Perhaps 
the greatest craving of her nature was for sympathy and for some 
one to lean on. Early in her life she had given up the old religious 
faith, and there had in consequence come into her life a great sense 
of loneliness; her kin understood her not, and she found few 
congenial souls. The sympathy and helpfulness of George Henry 
Lewes drew her to him, and the union proved a happy one. George 

•A legal technicality stood in the way of a divorce between Lewes and his wife, from whom 
he had separated for sufficient reason. The relationship between Lewes and George Eliot was 
virtually, though not formally, a marriage. 



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Eliot's nature was profoundly serious, and her spirit, as revealed 
in her books, deeply religious. There is at times a suggestion of 
the Puritan in the sternness of the moral law set forth in her novels. 
There is humor in the homely scenes of her less philosophic novels 
drawn from her girlhood recollections, but her usual mood is one 
of great moral earnestness. 

The Novels. — The novels of George Eliot fall into two groups, 
and her literary career covers about twenty years, from 1857 to 
1876. The novels of the first group are Scenes from Clerical Life 
(1857-1858), including Amos Barton, Mr. GilfiVs Love-story, and 
Janet's Repentance; Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss, 
Silas Marner (1861). Those of the second group are: Romola 
(1863), Felix Holt (1866), Middlemarch (1871-1872), and Daniel 
Deronda (1876). In the first group of novels George Eliot wrote 
out of her own experiences and observations in Warwickshire and 
adjoining counties, and these works accordingly have a good 
deal of family history in them and some autobiography. The 
character of Adam Bede, for instance, in the novel of that name 
is partly drawn from George Eliot's own father, while Dinah 
Morris was modeled after an aunt who was a Methodist exhorter. 
In The Mill on the Floss Maggie Tulliver is a portrait of Mary 
Ann Evans herself as a girl, and Tom Tulliver is her brother, 
Isaac Evans. Indeed, so thinly veiled are certain characters in 
Scenes from Clerical Life and several minor ones in Adam Bede, 
that they were easily identified by those acquainted with the fam- 
ilies of the novelist's old neighborhood. The portrayal in these 
earlier novels of provincial life, with its humorous and tragic inci- 
dents and situations, shows what great dramatic power George 
Eliot had. 

The novels of the first group were written more rapidly than 
those of the second and with less effort and studied preparation. 
George Eliot had long been ambitious to write a story on the Italian 
Renaissance; and so she went to Florence, read an immense 
number of books, familiarized herself with historic spots in the 
old city of Savonarola, and laboriously produced Romola. It is 
a monument to her learning and industry, but it lacks the human 



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interest of its predecessors. Even when she turned again to 
English scenes in Middlemarch and partly in Daniel Deronda, she 
could not quite bring into them the freshness of her earlier work. 
She was older, she had thought and struggled greatly, and she 
somewhat overburdened the later books with psychology. 

The Psychological Novel. — George Eliot was the first to make 
prominent in our prose fiction what has been called the "psy- 
chological novel," — that is, the novel in which the motives of the 
characters — their inner lives— are carefully analyzed by the novel- 
ist. The results of certain actions are shown in the light of cause 
and effect: the tragic consequences of self-indulgence; the need of 
self-sacrifice on the part of the individual for the larger good of 
the community or the race. She likes to impress some great 
moral law: Silas Marner was saved from selfishness and despair 
by the love of a little child; Lydgate, in Middlemarch, lost his 
ideals and wrecked his life through fatal weakness of the will; 
Tito Melema, in Romola, by self-indulgence gradually grew in- 
different to the call of duty until loss of life followed loss of charac- 
ter. The tragedy of failure — in which not physical death, but the 
loss of an ideal or the frustration of a great hope constitutes the 
catastrophe — is a favorite theme with George Eliot. She teaches 
that the spiritual progress of the world depends upon sacrifice. 
No other novelist has made so much of character growth and 
character decay, and no one has surpassed her in revealing the 
moral grandeur of obscure lives in which fidelity to duty is a 
daily religion. 

George Eliot's Style. — While George Eliot is a great moral 
teacher and delineator of character, it must not be forgotten that 
she is at the same time a great artist. Silas Marner is one of the 
most perfectly constructed stories in English fiction. Adam 
Bede — generally regarded as her most original and interesting 
work — is almost Shakespearean in its dramatic power. In all 
her novels there are passages of cadenced prose of rare poetic 
beauty, touched with sadness sometimes, and again splendid 
with the gloom of Greek tragedy. Her poetry is somber and 
heavy with fate, but The Spanish Gypsy, her most ambitious 



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work in verse, contains passages of exquisite harmony, while 
"The Choir Invisible" is a solemn hymn on the immortality of 
influence. The concluding chapter of The Mill on the Floss is 
one of the finest specimens of impassioned, and yet delicately 
modulated prose, in the literature of prose fiction. 

George Eliot had the heart of a poet and the head of a philos- 
opher. The heaviest passages are shot through with gleams of 
emotion; and sympathy, the greatest need of her woman's heart, 
lights up the somber atmosphere of her novels. She believed that 
the future of each man and woman is in a sense a reflection of 
his or her past life, and that "our finest hope is finest memory." 




STEVENSON MEMORIAL IN ST. GILES'S CHURCH, EDINBURGH 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850-1894) 

His Life. — Robert Louis Stevenson, romancer, essayist, and letter-writer, 
was born in Edinburgh in 1850, son of an eminent lighthouse engineer. His 
maternal grandfather was professor of philosophy in the University of Edin- 
burgh. Hence the remark from a friend of Stevenson that he inherited 
both Lux et Veritas (Light and Truth). Stevenson was educated at the 
University of Edinburgh, where he was noted as an omnivorous reader and 
as a writer for the college magazine. In accordance with his father's wishes 



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he studied civil engineering, — actually following this vocation for a time — 
then studied law; but in his case the trial of the law ended in the Scotch 
verdict of ' 'not proven. ' ' He therefore went back to his first love, literature. 
His health was poor, and travel in France and Spain was recommended. 
Here he led an outdoor life, and here he found abundant material for sketches 
and stories. This half-Bohemian life appealed to Stevenson, and henceforth 
he became in spirit and movement a citizen of the world. 

In 1879 Stevenson came to America, crossed the continent in an immigrant 
train to San Francisco, and in and near that city spent almost a year. He 
had undertaken this journey partly for the love of adventure, partly to gain 
new literary material, and partly for his health. In San Francisco he mar- 
ried Mrs. Osbourne, whom he had met four years before in France. Soon 
after this the Stevensons returned to Europe, spending the next few years 
in Switzerland, France, and the south of England. Meanwhile he had writ- 
ten Treasure Island and Dr. JekyllandMr. Hyde, the latter adding greatly 
to his fame. In 1887 he left England forever for America; and after spending 
a winter in the Adirondacks, he set sail for the South Sea Islands with 
his wife, two step-children, and his mother. For two years they cruised 
about in the South Seas, and in 1890 settled in Samoa near Apia, where he 
had bought an estate. Here as a sort of island chieftain, on friendly terms 
with the natives and visited by friends from home-lands beyond the seas, 
Stevenson lived happily until his death in 1894. He is buried on the top of 
Vaea Mountain just back of his home; on the big stone that covers his 
grave are carved these now familiar lines written by himself: 

Under the wide and starry sky 
Dig the grave and let me lie. 
Glad did I live and gladly die, 
And I laid me down with a will. 

This be the verse you grave for me: 
Here he lies where he longed to be; 
Home is the sailor, home from the sea, 
And the hunter home from the hill. 

His Personality. — Stevenson's personality is as interesting as 
anything he ever wrote. 'Man of the world, Bohemian, poet, 
Cavalier, Puritan, he was "brother to a prince and fellow to a 
beggar," all in one. The four characteristics of the man Steven- 
son which shine through his works and which endeared him to 
his friends are: (1) His boyishness. He never lost his zest for ad- 
venture and his enthusiasm. He wrote Treasure Island for his 
twelve-year-old stepson with the energy and fresh joy of a youth 



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whose highest ambition is to chase pirates. (2) His friendliness. 
"He always liked the people he was with/' and they loved him in 
return. The natives of Samoa named him "Tusitala" ("teller 
of tales"), and built a road to his house which they called "the 
road of loving hearts." (3) His industry. In spite of his almost 
constant physical suffering Stevenson wrote a small library of 
books during the twenty years of his literary life. He was remark- 
ably painstaking with his work, copying and recopying his manu- 
scripts; he was his own severest critic. He said that "it is better 
to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser." 
(4) His courage. There was often a dashing recklessness in the 
way Stevenson tempted fate to do its worst. Both in his fight 
against disease and death, carried on with steady cheerfulness, 
and in the part he played in Samoan politics, he showed rare 
courage. His philosophy is summed up in a letter he wrote to an 
English friend, in which he declares that every man "was born 
for struggle, and only tastes his life in effort and on the condition 
that he is opposed." 

His Works — Stevenson- wrote — besides a number of sketches, 
plays, and poems, — half a dozen long romances, some short stories, 
and two or three volumes of personal and critical essays. Of the 
longer works the best known are Treasure Island (1883), Kid- 
napped (1886), The Master of Ballanirae (1889), David Balfour 
(1893), The Wrecker (in collaboration with his stepson, Lloyd 
Osbourne, 1892). These are tales of adventure, modern sea- 
stories. These narratives represent the rise of a new romantic 
movement in English literature, a reaction from excessive realism. 
They are nothing more than a form of the historical novel, which 
had died out since the days of Scott and his imitators. Now an- 
other great Scotchman made pure romance popular. The book 
that brought Stevenson world-wide fame was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 
Hyde, sl study in dual personality, the same theme which is treated 
more briefly in Markheim, a powerful piece of psychology. Weir 
of Hermiston, left unfinished at his death, gave promise of being 
his masterpiece. 

Stevenson was a successful writer of short stories; these have 



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been published in the two volumes entitled The Merry Men and 
The New Arabian Nights. The stories are generally romantic in 
spirit with a touch of whimsical humor, and many of them have a 
moral element. They are always artistically constructed, for 
Stevenson had a delicate sense of form which he perfected by 
unremitting labor. But he is more than a writer of fiction; he 
is one of the most delightful essayists and letter-writers in any 
literature. Besides an interesting personality, Stevenson had a 
mind steeped in great literature, and along with all that he had 
a lively fancy. His personal essays are charming confidential talks 
out of a full mind. A few of the best are "An Apology for Idlers," 
"Talks and Talkers/ ' "A Gossip of Romance, " "The Character of 
Dogs," "Aes Triplex/' "Pulvis et Umbra." The essays, personal 
and literary, are contained in the volumes Virginibus Puerisque 7 
Familiar Studies of Men and Books, and Memories and Portraits. 
Every young person should at least read "Books Which Have In- 
fluenced Me" and the inspiring "Aes Triplex" ("Triple Brass," — 
that is, indomitable courage) ; this last is full of Stevenson's own 
buoyant optimism. Here, for instance, is a typical sentence from 
it: "Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a 
hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition 
of mankind." Stevenson's letters, written to his friends from 
Vailima, his home in Samoa, are as interesting as his stories. 

Stevenson's Style. — Stevenson worked to perfect his style, 
with the result that he finally wrought out a clear, well-modulated 
form of expression, which is the admiration of critics and the joy 
of cultivated readers. He "played the sedulous ape," as he ex- 
presses it, to many masters of style, finally coming to the con- 
clusion that the only test of writing is this: "If there is anywhere 
a thing said in two sentences that could have been as clearly and 
as engagingly and as forcibly said in one, then it's amateur work." 
Artist that he was, Stevenson was also much of a preacher; but 
his moralizing is seasoned with a large tolerance and genial humor. 
The spirit of Stevenson the man and the writer may be summed 
up in these words from one of his letters: "So long as we love we 
serve. So long as we are loved by others, I would almost say we 



430 



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are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend." 
These qualities in Robert Louis Stevenson have made him one of 
the most companionable souls in our literature. 

MINOR NOVELISTS 

Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873).— Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, 
was one of the most popular novelists of his day, brilliant, versa- 
tile, industrious. He turned out in rapid succession a number of 
novels on a variety of subjects, reflecting with uncommon clever- 
ness the literary tastes of the mid-nineteenth century. He was, 
at the same time, an active politician, member of Parliament, 
and a conspicuous figure in fashionable society. 

Bulwer wrote sentimental and philanthropic novels — somewhat 
like those of Dickens a little later — such as, Paul Clifford (1830), 
and Eugene Aram (1832); historical romances — The Last Days of 
Pompeii (1834), Rienzi (1835), The Last of the Barons (1843), 
and Harold (1843); "Gothic" tales of mystery and horror — 
Zanoni (1842), and A Strange Story (1862); realistic society 
novels — Ernest Maltravers (1837), The Caxtons (1849), and My 
Novel (1853) — suggestive of Thackeray. Besides novels, he wrote 
two plays — The Lady of Lyons and Richelieu — which, in spite of 
their artificial, melodramatic nature, have retained a certain 
degree of popularity. The Last Days of Pompeii has proved to 
be Bulwer's most enduring work. Indeed, as a writer of historical 
romances Bulwer is at his best. While confessedly an imitator 
of Scott, he was a more faithful student of history, and his avowed 
purpose was to make fiction truer to fact. In order to enhance 
the dramatic element, he was fond of choosing for treatment in 
his novels critical turning-points in history. His romances are 
more sensational than Sir Walter's, and his characters far less 
human. Still, Bulwer's historical and social novels are interesting 
reading to-day, and their author holds a secure place among the 
minor novelists. The popularity of The Last Days of Pompeii, 
in particular, shows no signs of abating. 

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855). — Next to George Eliot and Jane 
Austen, the most important woman novelist of the Victorian 



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Era is Charlotte Bronte, daughter of a Yorkshire clergyman. 
Miss Bronte spent her life of thirty-nine years at the little village 
of Haworth amid the dreary northern moors. Like Jane Austen, 
she limited her settings and characters to her own region, except 
in Villette (1853), which reflects her experiences as a teacher and 
pupil in Brussels. Her other novels, Jane Eyre (1847) and Shirley 
(1849), belong to Yorkshire. Into these books she put her own 
mental and spiritual struggles, which were many. Her aim in 
her greatest novel, Jane Eyre, was to depict with genuine feeling 
homely scenes and unconventional people. One day she said 
to her sisters, Anne and Emily, themselves writers of novels: 
4 'I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself, who 
shall be as interesting as any of yours. " She more than kept her 
word: Jane Eyre, the heroine of the book by that name, was a 
new kind of heroine, and Rochester, whom she ultimately marries, 
a new kind of hero. Charlotte Bronte looked into her own heart 
and wrote; the result is a novel of impassioned realism. Into 
the commonplace she put imagination and emotion and made 
startling things happen. Several incidents and situations are as 
thrilling as one finds in melodramas and the old "dime novels," 
but the art of Jane Eyre saves it. The story and characters have 
the stamp of sincerity. By her realism Charlotte Bronte suggests 
Jane Austen, and by her intensity and her interest in moods and 
motives she is related to George Eliot. 

Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) — Friend, literary associate, and 
in spirit a kinsman of Thackeray, Anthony Trollope was an uncom- 
promising realist. There is nothing romantic about his thirty-odd 
novels. Trollope held a position in the London post-office, but 
all his spare time he devoted to writing stories. Every day, 
rain or shine, he wrote so many pages, wherever he might be. 
If, for instance, he was waiting at a railway station for a train, 
out came his tablet and pencil, and in a moment he was lost to 
the noise and the crowd, deep into his plot, working away. In 
this methodical manner, he turned out an immense number of 
books, many of them of surprisingly good quality under the cir- 
cumstances. He wrote mainly of the country clergy and gentry 



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in and about cathedral towns. He does not probe into character 
or concern himself with the deeper feelings of his men and women; 
he puzzles over no problems. The tone in his novels is one of 
high-bred irony bordering on banter. Trollope was a master of 
social satire, smooth and polished in his style, reminding one, 
both in matter and manner, of Thackeray, but without the 
latter's geniality. 

The novels of Trollope best worth reading are Barchester Towers 
(1857), Framley Parsonage (1861), and The Last Chronicle of 
Barset (1867V Barchester Towers, portraying life among the 
clergy at the imaginary cathedral town of Barchester, is as real- 
istic as a Jane Austen novel and as amusingly clever as a chapter 
from Vanity Fair. 

Charles Reade (1814-1884). — Another realist, but sentimental 
enough and reformative enough to be a kinsman of Dickens, was 
Charles Reade, author of Peg Woffington (1852), It is Never too 
Late to Mend (1856), The Cloister and the Hearth (1860), Hard 
Cash (1863), Put Yourself in his Place (1870), and other novels. 
Reade began his career by writing plays, and his first novels 
have a distinctly dramatic quality; Peg Woffington, one of his best 
stories, deals with stage life. Other stories have to do with social 
reforms: Put Yourself in his Place, for instance, is a plea for the 
rights of the individual workingman as against the tyranny of 
trades unions. Reade made a thorough study of the social con- 
ditions treated in his books; they have, therefore, in addition to 
the interest of the stories proper, a value as social documents. 
Both in purposefulness and dramatic movement his novels suggest 
those of Dickens. His one historical romance, The Cloister and 
the Hearth, a story of the fifteenth century, the time of the Re- 
naissance and of Erasmus, is his masterpiece, and one of the few 
great novels of its class since Scott. To prepare himself for writing 
this novel, Reade is said to have gone through a vast number 
of books. 

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875). — Charles Kingsley was a clergy- 
man, and for a time Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. 
He was both a religious and social reformer, attempting to democ- 



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ratize the Church and to bring it and the laboring man closer 
together. In two impassioned novels, Yeast (1848) and Alton 
Locke (1850), Kingsley points out the grievances of the poor 
working-classes and the obligation of the Church to help them. 
He believed that between labor and capital the Church was the 
proper mediator. Kingsley was a friend and disciple of Carlyle. 
In these first novels he preaches what may be called Christian 
socialism. 

Kingsley wrote two historical novels, Hypatia (1853), an account 
of the conflict between Greek philosophy and Christianity in the 
old city of Alexandria in the fifth century; and Westward Ho! sl 
breezy story of voyage and adventure in the days of Elizabeth, 
when England was sending expeditions to the New World. West- 
ward Ho! is the most spirited of Kingsley's novels and, all things 
considered, his best work. It bears the same relation to the 
Elizabethan Age that Thackeray's Henry Esmond does to the 
Queen Anne Period. Kingsley also wrote poetry of considerable 
merit. 

Other Minor Novelists. — By virtue of one or two social novels, 
MRS. ELIZABETH GASKELL (1810-1865), holds an honorable 
place among the lesser writers. She, too, had an instinct for 
reform, and after visiting factories and the homes of laborers, 
wrote a book or two depicting conditions as she saw them in 
certain manufacturing towns of northern England. The novel 
by which she is still remembered, however, is Cranford (1853), 
which has long been a classic picture of old-fashioned village 
life. As a novelist Mrs. Gaskell is not unlike Maria Edgeworth 
and Jane Austen in her clear and forceful delineation of rural 
society. 

WlLKIE COLLINS (1824-1889) thrilled a large class of readers 
for twenty or thirty years with his novels of mystery. He knows 
how to keep the reader in suspense to the last, when the puzzle is 
solved to everybody's satisfaction. It is hardly necessary to 
say that books so luridly exciting do not belong to great litera- 
ture, and yet The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone 
(1868), Collins's most successful novels, are not without merit 



434 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



as examples of plot structure; for however unreal the characters 
are, the story at least grips the attention. The works of Collins 
are in reality detective stories, forerunners of the "Sherlock 
Holmes" species so common to-day. 

RICHARD D. BLACKMORE (1825-1900) has written one book, 
Lorna Doone (1869), which has attained a deserved popularity, 
not only for the interesting and wholesome love-story, but also 
for the sympathy with nature revealed in it and the poetic prose 
of many of the descriptions. As Scott interpreted the Highlands, 
so has Blackmore given us an unforgettable picture of the alto- 
gether charming landscapes of Devonshire. 

LATER NOVELISTS 

George Meredith (1828-1909).— The first regular novel of 
George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Fever el (1859), appeared 
the same year in which George Eliot's Adam Bede was published, 
and during the half-century following, he came to be regarded by 
discriminating critics as one of the greater English novelists. 
He did not in his lifetime attain wide popularity, nor is he likely 
ever to be a general favorite. The reasons are not far to seek: 
in the first place, Meredith, like Carlyle and Browning, twists 
and condenses the English language, so that only the patient and 
thoughtful reader can follow him in his whimsical moods; in the 
next place, he is often extremely subtle in his allusions and fan- 
tastic in his figures of speech, so that a mind less nimble than his 
own fails to keep up with him. He is a psychological novelist, 
like George Eliot in his fondness for analysis of motive, but unlike 
her in his preference for comedy over tragedy. In a delightful 
essay on The Idea of Comedy (1877) Meredith defines the essence 
of comedy as "thoughtful laughter," the "humor of the mind": 
that is the kind of comedy one finds in Meredith's novels — the 
laughter of the mind, not of the diaphragm. This is very different 
from Fielding, or Dickens, or Thackeray, or even from George Eliot 
in her homely scenes in which Mrs. Poyser is the talker. Mere- 
dith's novels are essentially intellectual; there is a clash of ideas, a 



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good deal of mental play, much clever fencing. He likes to take 
some character with a hobby, — as, for instance, the elder Feverel's 
theory about a boy's education, or Willoughby's refined selfish- 
ness (iD The Egoist) — and make him suffer for it, by putting him 
through a sort of purgatory. Men and women must, he thinks, 
atone for social wrongs. Meredith's comedy often has the bitter 
sting of tragedy. 

Of Meredith's twelve or thirteen novels, those most represen- 
tative are The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (in many respects the most 
poetic and interesting), Harry Richmond, Beauchamp's Career, 
The Egoistj Diana of the Crossways. All things considered, The 
Egoist will probably give one the best general idea of Meredith's 
characteristics. 

Thomas Hardy (1840 ). — Thomas Hardy has spent his life 

in his native Dorsetshire, studying the scenes and the rural folk 
he knows so well. He studied architecture and practiced it for a 
time in London ; but he grew weary of the artificial life of the great 
city and went back to Dorset to study, to think, and to write of 
nature and the peasants. Hardy is a realist and at the same time 
a poet; to him the hill, the heath, the woodland, the storm, the 
sunset, are alive with personality, in comparison with which the 
creature called man is a mere shadow. Men come and go, but 
nature is abiding, an eternal background for the little drama of 
individual life. No other novelist has succeeded so well in human- 
izing nature and in making the setting of his novels a motive for 
action on the part of his characters, with the determining power 
of destiny. Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native, for example, 
is as much a person as any man or woman in the book, so wonder- 
fully has the author invested the old barren moor with warmth 
and color. The atmosphere of that old Wessex region, famous 
in early Saxon times, hangs about the novels of Hardy like a 
purple haze. Fate looms large in these stories, as it does in some 
old Greek drama; for Hardy is something of a pagan, and half- 
ironically regards man as a plaything of the gods. And so, while 
his novels are intensely interesting, they are upon the whole 
depressing. 



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RUDYARD KIPLING 



Hardy's earlier novels, — Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), A 
Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)— 
are pleasant reading, because of their fresh idyllic quality and 
comparatively cheerful tone; the atmosphere grows more somber 
in The Return of the Native (1878) and The Woodlanders (1887), 
two powerful works ; and finally, the gloom deepens into pessimism 
in Tess of the D' Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). 
The two novels which reveal his art and philosophy most fully 
are The Return of the Native and Tess of the D' Urbervilles, in which 
the sinister forces of nature seem to conspire to show how help- 
less is man in the hands of fate. 

Rudyard Kipling (1865 ). — The best known of the later 

writers of prose fiction is Rudyard Kipling, whose short stories 
and poems gave him immediate and widespread popularity. 
Endowed with great mental curiosity, he has shown interest in all 
that is modem; he reflects the spirit of a machine age both in the 



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technique and content of much of his writing. He knows, more- 
over, the British soldier and speaks with admiration and author- 
ity of "Tommy Atkins" and military doings in India. Indeed, 
he has revealed modern India to us, as long ago Scott showed us 
Scotland, and Maria Edgeworth, Ireland; of the mystic Orient 
he is master, that dreamy, irresponsible India which is felt as an 
atmosphere in the pages of Kim. At home in India, in England, 
and in Vermont, Kipling is in spirit a citizen of the world, and his 
appeal is universal. 

While he has written several successful novels, it is in the short 
story that Kipling is at his best. More than any other British 
author he has helped to make this form of literature classic by 
investing with permanent and general interest scenes and persons 
in which the East and West meet. Such stories as The Man who 
Would be King, The Brushwood Boy, and Without Benefit of 
Clergy, are delicate little romances, prose-poems, steadied and 
given substance by the realistic touch of a master who is at heart 
a man of action. His short stories have appealed to all sorts and 
conditions of men and made them his friends. When Kipling was 
dangerously ill in New York in 1899, newsboys and cabdrivers 
eagerly inquired every morning about his condition, a tribute 
paid to few men of letters, however democratic they may profess 
to be. 

Of his poetry the "Recessional" has long been sung and quoted 
over the English-speaking world, and would of itself assure him 
permanent fame. The collected volumes of his yerse, Barrack- 
Room Ballads and The Seven Seas, strongly appeal to many persons 
who ordinarily do not read poetry. The reason for this may 
doubtless be found in the unconventional nature of these poems, 
their vigorous rhythm, and the buoyant courage which is written 
large between the lines; these qualities make them vital to those 
who look for energy and action in literature. 

True Anglo-Saxon that he is, Kipling is both moralist and im- 
perialist, with an abounding faith in the future of the British 
people. That faith is shared by all who, as English-speaking men 
and women, are heirs of such a splendid heritage as this brief 



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history attempts to record. The long story of English literature, 
which we have imperfectly traced through fourteen centuries, 
may well conclude on a note so clearly prophetic. To the inheritors 
of her vast renown Mother England speaks bravely and hopefully 
in these words of Kipling : 

Go to your work and be strong, halting not in your ways, 
Baulking the end half-won for an instant dole of praise. 
Stand to your work and be wise — certain of sword and pen, 
Who are neither children nor Gods, but men in a world of men. 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 
THE PERIOD IN OUTLINE (1837-1910) 



439 



LITERATURE 

I. The Essayists 

Thomas B. Macaulay (1800-1859) Essay 
on Milton, published, 1825 

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881): Hero-Wor- 
shiper, Prophet 

John Ruskin (1819-1900): Art-Critic and 
Social Reformer 

Matthew Arnold: Apostle of Culture 

Newman, Pater, Froude, Huxley 

II. The Poets 

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) : Idylls of the 

King, InMemoriam, etc. 
Robert Browning (1812-1889) : Monologues, 

Dramatic Lyrics, Dramas 
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) : Poetry of Doubt 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861): 

Sonnets from the Portuguese, Casa Guidi 

Windows, etc. 
The Pre-Raphaelites: Rossetti, Morris, 

Charles Algernon Swinburne (1837-1900) 

III. The Novelists 

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) : The Humani- 
tarian Novel 

William M. Thackeray (1811-1863) : Social 
Satire, Realism 

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) (1819-1880) : 
The Psychological Novel 

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894): The 
Romance of Adventure 

Minor Novelists: Bulwer-Lytton, C.Bronte, 
Trollope, Reade, Kingsley 

Later Novelists: George Meredith, Thomas 
Hardy, Rudyard Kipling 



HISTORY 

Reign of Victoria, 1837-1901 

Reign of Edward VII, 1901- 
1910 

Morse's Telegraph, 1844 

Repeal of Corn Laws, 1846 

Crimean War, 1854 

Publication of Darwin's Ori- 
gin of Species, 1859 

Atlantic Cable laid, 1866 

Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, 
1886 

First Hague Peace Confer- 
ence, 1898 

Boer War, 1899-1902 

First Wireless Telegraph be- 
tween England and Ameri- 
ca, 1907 

Accession of George V, 1910 

House of Lords loses veto 
power, 1911 

George V crowned in India as 
Emperor, 1911 



Age of Democracy and Science ; Reign of the Novel and the Short Story ; 
Practical Philanthropy; Wide Range of Literature. 



440 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



SOME USEFUL BOOKS 

Historical. — Lee's Life of Queen Victoria, McCarthy's History of Our Own 
Times. 

Literary. — Saintsburv's History of Nineteenth Century Literature, Walk- 
er's The Age of Tennyson (Macmillan), Stedman's Victorian Poets (Hough- 
ton), BrownelFs Victorian Prose Masters, Dawson's Makers of Modern 
English (Revell), Dowden's Transcripts and Studies ("Victorian Liter- 
ature"), Lives of authors in English Men of Letters and Great Writers 
Series. 

The following works will be found helpful: 

(1) The Essayists. — Birrell's Obiter Dicta, Bagehot's Literary Studies, 
Bayne's My Masters, Hutton', Literary Essays, Gates's Three Studies in 
Literature, Stephen's Hours in a Library, Trevelyan's Life and Letters of 
Macaulay. Mrs. Meynell's John Ruskin, Hobson's Johr Ruskin, Guernsey's 
Thomas Carlyle (Appleton), Woodberry's Makers of Literature, Intro- 
ductions to Holt's "English Readings." 

(2) The Poets. — Hallam Tennyson's Memoir of Tennyson, Van Dyke's 
The Poetry of Tennyson (Scribners), Luce's Handbook to Tennyson, Luce's 
Tennyson Primer (Macmillan) , Ritchie's Tennyson and his Friends, Genung's 
In Memoriam, Sneath's The Mind of Tennyson, Globe Edition of Tennyson 
(Macmillan). * * * Mrs. Orr's Handbook to Browning, Corson's Introduc- 
tion to Browning (Heath), Brooke's The Poetry of Browning, Alexander's 
Introduction to Browning (Ginn), Symons* Introduction to Browning 
(Cassell), Berdoe's Browning Cyclopaedia, Riverside (Houghton) or Cam- 
berwell (Crowell) or Globe (Macmillan) edition ot Browning. 

(3) The Novelists. — Cross's Development of the English Novel (Mac- 
millan), Stoddard's Evolution of the Novel, Perry'c A Study of Prose 
Fiction (Houghton), Dawson's Makers of Prose Fiction (Revell), Hamil- 
ton's Methods and Materials of Fiction, Phelps's Essays on Modern Novel - 
ists (Macmillan). 

Page's British Poets of the Nineteenth Century (Sanborn) is an excellent 
volume of representative poems. 



CHAPTER TWELVE 



TWENTIETH CENTURY WRITERS 
(Supplementary Chapter) 

Social Democracy. — The widespread interest in social welfare, 
already noted in the works of the later Victorian writers, forms 
a still more marked characteristic of the twentieth century. 
Reforms which were vaguely foreshadowed in the last decades 
of the nineteenth century have been realized by legislative enact- 
ment. The public mind and the public eye have been centered 
upon the inequalities in social condition, and practical, organized 
effort has been exerted to remedy the evils of poverty. Preventive 
measures have received more attention than merely curative; 
improved sanitation has lowered the death rate, cleanliness has 
led to health, happiness, and thriftiness. Politically, the trend 
of thought and action has been strongly democratic; socialistic 
theories have been boldly proclaimed on street corners and in 
legislative halls, while newspapers and magazines have freely 
opened their columns to frank discussions of proposed reforms. 
Such agitation naturally resulted in much unrest, particularly 
in the old conservative countries of Europe, where the democratic 
leaven was beginning to work on the ancient lump of tradition. 
The clash between the forces of reaction and those of progress, 
between the ideal of autocratic power and that of beneficent 
democracy, finally resulted in the most tragic conflict in the 
history of nations, the World War, which began in 1914. The 
effect on international life as well as on literature has been deeply 
significant. 

The New Realism. — The literature of the twentieth century 
has in the main reflected a growing interest in common, everyday 
life. It is realistic still, but with a difference; the emphasis has 



442 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



been shifted in the writings of many novelists, dramatists, and 
poets, from the thoughts and doings of 4 'the average man" to the 
struggles, failures, and aspirations of the man socially and eco- 
nomically below the average. The later books have much to say 
about the "common lot" and just as much, perhaps, about the 
sub-common lot. The result has been the adoption into the 
republic of letters of a variegated and, according to old standards, 
a somewhat degenerate citizenship. The proletariat has found a 
voice in literature. Of course humble folk had their recognition 
in Wordsworth and Dickens and Hardy long t efore, but not in 
the free, inward, and untrammeled way in which they reveal 
themselves in Bennett, Masefield, and Gibson. This later realism 
is downright and thorough-going, sometimes sordid and brutal. 

The Celtic Revival. — Parallel with this interest in the realism 
of lower life we find an enthusiasm for pure romance. Indeed, 
in the history of literature the two have never been long separated. 
Romantic revivals have served to counteract the paralysis of 
provincialism in art. The latest rebirth of romance has come in 
connection with the study and interpretation of old Irish folk- 
lore. This "Celtic Renaissance," as it is usually called, had its 
beginnings with the publication in 1888 of a little volume entitled * • 
Poems and Ballads of Young- Ireland, in which there is seen "the 
cooperative, concerted nature of the effort of the younger genera- 
tion to give a new impulse to Irish poetry." 1 One of the contribu- 
tors to this volume was William Butler Yeats. Since then a 
number of poets and dramatists have interpreted in exquisite 
verse and prose the romantic legends of old Ireland, cetering 
about such primitive Celtic heroes as Cuchulain, fighter of the 
sea, Oisin, immortal wanderer, Caolte, stormer of castles, and 
Deirdre, the ill-fated lady of sorrows. This shadowy dream- 
world of Celtic myth has furnished inspiration to a group of Irish 
poets for an enchanting cycle of song in lyric and dramatic form. 

From the long list of recent writers a few of the most prominent 



!Ernest A. Boyd: Ireland's Literary Renaissance, pp. 94-95. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY WRITERS 



443 



may be chosen as representatives of twentieth-century English 
literature. Most of these, it is safe to say, have already become 
standard and their permanent fame is assured. Opinions may 
differ as to their relative importance and as to the ultimate 
standing of certain individual works, but there is likely to be 
general agreement that these writers deserve a place in a chapter 
on contemporary literature. The authors selected naturally 
fall into three general classes: Novelists and Essayists, Dramatists, 
Poets. 

NOVELISTS AND ESSAYISTS 

William Frend De Morgan (1839-1917).— Until he was sixty- 
five, De Morgan devoted himself to painting, to making designs 
for stained glass, and to the manufacture of pottery. At this 
advanced age he became a novelist and published in 1906 his 
first and greatest book, Joseph Vance. It is the history of a boy 
of low origin who was rescued from poverty and neglect and 
educated by a kind-hearted gentleman of wealth and culture, 
Dr. Thorpe of London. The story is one of the longest and cer- 
tainly the most leisurely in movement among twentieth-century 
novels. The plot is loosely strung together, but the characters 
grow into the reader's regard as the story advances until they 
seem to be real persons worthy of lasting remembrance. The 
method of De Morgan is essentially that of Thackeray and 
Dickens and Trollope; in him we find a return to the manner of 
the early Victorian novelists, but with no loss of popularity on 
that account in an age which demands greater swiftness of develop- 
ment and more definiteness of technique than the older generation. 
Other novels of De Morgan are Alice-for-Short, Somehow Good, 
and It Never Can Happen Again. Of these, the last two are more 
modern in theme and construction, but De Morgan's fame as a 
novelist is likely to rest with Joseph Vance, which is a great life- 
book that wears well. 

Joseph Conrad (1857 ). — Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski 

(his original name) is a native of southwestern Russia, but has 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



spent most of his life on English ships and in England. He is 
descended from a prominent family of military and artistic tastes. 
He left home early in life, bent upon knowing the sea and its 
mysteries; for nearly twenty years he belonged to the English 
merchant marine and sailed many seas and visited strange lands. 
Thus he came to have a familiar knowledge of all kinds and 
conditions of men and of nature in every mood, but the tropics 
♦ made the strongest appeal to him. During almost endless wander- 
ings, he acquired a vast fund of information and heard a variety 
of tongues, a number of which he learned to speak; at last, when 
nearly forty, he settled in England. Since then Conrad has 
written many short stories and several novels; his works number 
about twenty volumes, one of which is an autobiography, A 
Personal Record (1912). His first novel, Almayer's Folly, was 
published in 1895. Several of his best known and more popular 
volumes are Tales of Unrest (1898), Lord Jim (1900), Typhoon 
(1902), Youth (1903), The Mirror of the Sea (1906), and Chance 
(1914). A favorite theme with Conrad is the struggle of man 
against nature or with certain larger forces of life, which he 
cannot understand and which usually defeat him or sadly weaken 
him in the end. His books are full of the atmosphere of the sea; 
the language is often poetic, and the refined subtlety of the style 
reminds one of Henry James and of the French short-story 
writers. Among the novels, Lord Jim, and among the shorter 
stories, the volumes entitled Youth and Typhoon, will perhaps 
give one the best idea of Conrad's powers. He has a passion for 
ships and the sea. 

John Galsworthy (1867 ). — John Galsworthy is a native 

of Surrey, an Oxford man, a lawyer by profession, a novelist and 
dramatist by practice. Before he was thirty he began to write, 
and his four most important novels are The Man of Property 
(1906), The Country House (1907), Fraternity (1909), and The 
Patrician (1911). Two later novels are The Dark Flower (1914) 
and Beyond (1917). Galsworthy is a social satirist, a mordant 
analyst of the complacency, narrowness, and traditional limita- 
tions of upper middle-class English society. His books depict the 



TWENTIETH CENTURY WRITERS 



445 



ultra-conservatism of various classes — the wealthy, the country 
nobility, the intellectuals, the aristocracy — each self-satisfied 
and self-centered. He has a fine sense of structure and propor- 
tion, a delicate feeling for the right word and the exact phrase, 
and a keen eye for weaknesses in character. His novels are cold 
but exceedingly clever; his persons are sometimes types rather 
than real individuals; and his characterization occasionally borders 
on caricature. His style is noteworthy for its clearness and 
distinction. 

Arnold Bennett (1867 ).— Arnold Bennett, a native of 

North Staffordshire, did his first literary work as editor of a 
London periodical called Woman, after having grown weary of 
the law. The stories of the Five Towns, which grew out of the 
gray and sordid life in the pottery district of Staffordshire, display 
fine craftmanship and convincing characterization. It is in The 
Old Wives' Tale (1908), however, that Bennett's art is seen at 
its best. This is the story of the lives of two women, the daughters 
of an old draper, who labor and struggle and dream through fifty 
years of hope and disillusionment. The plot is intricate, but 
realistic; and the experiences are those of people in mean and 
depressing surroundings, whose outlook upon the world is clouded 
with factory smoke and saddened by the hopelessness of any 
escape. It is not a cheerful book, but it is true to life in the large. 
Clayhanger (1910) is another study of life in the pottery region 
which Bennett knows so well, not as powerful as The Old Wives 1 
Tale, but abounding in bits of strong realism and good portraiture. 
The second volume in the proposed trilogy, of which Clayhanger 
is the first, is Hilda Lessways (1910), a weaker book. Besides 
these and other novels, Bennett has written dramas, sketches, and 
essays on a variety of subjects — on too great a variety, indeed, for 
his better genius. He is a many-sided man, but it may be safely 
asserted that his claim to permanent fame will rest upon his 
success in dealing with the romance of commonplace scenes and 
people like those in The Old Wives 1 Tale. 

Herbert George Wells (1866 ). — H. G. Wells has long 

been known to American readers as one of the most brilliant 



446 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



English essayists and novelists of this generation. He was born 
in Kent, early became interested in the study of science, and so 
gave up his original intention of becoming a business man; per- 
formed experiments in Huxley's laboratory; and graduated at 
the University of London. Out of Wells's interest in the romance 
of science grew his story-writing. Among his first efforts are such 
brilliant and fantastic things as The Time Machine (1895), The 
Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898), the 
products of a daring scientific imagination. Later on his stories 
became more sociological. Kipps and Marriage are novels with 
strong character interest, in which the author discusses social 
problems. These two works show a rare genius for satire and 
an unusual knowledge of biology. Mr. Britling Sees It Through 
(1916) was inspired by # the World War, and is one of his strongest 
books. It deals with the spiritual awakening of a cultured and 
self-centered Englishman whose favorite son dies at the front; 
through suffering, Mr. Britling finds God. Another war novel 
is The Soul of a Bishop (1917). Wells's fertility of invention is 
remarkable, but with all the brilliancy of his creative genius he 
is in danger of lowering the quality of his art through over- 
production. 

Other Novelists and Essayists. — Other novelists who have 
attained international recognition in the later Victorian era or 

in the present century are: Sir A. Conan Doyle (1859 ), 

author of A Study in Scarlet, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 

and other detective stories; Hall Caine (1853' ), author of 

The Deemster, The Manxman, and other novels with scenes in the 

Isle of Man; Anthony Hope Hawkins (1863- ), author of 

The Prisoner of Zenda and Rupert of Hentzau; May Sinclair, 

author of The Divine Fire; Maurice Hewlett (1861 ), 

author of The Life and Death of Richard Yea and Nay, The 
Queen's Quair, and The Forest Lovers ; Eden Phillpotts (1862- 

) , author of Children of the Mist and other stories which 

made Denvonshire scenes and folk as famous as Hardy's novels 
have made "Wessex" and Bennett's stories the North Stafford- 
shire region; William J. Locke (1863 ), author of The 



TWENTIETH CENTURY WRITERS 



447 



Beloved Vagabond, the most charming Bohemian story in recent 

literature; and Israel Zangwill (1864 ), author of The 

Children of the Ghetto and other stories of lowly Jewish life in 
London. 

Among twentieth-century English essayists, besides H. G. 
Wells and Arnold Bennett, two deserve special mention for their 
widespread popularity as companionable and brilliant interpreters 

of literature and life. Arthur Christopher Benson (1862 ), 

son of the late Archbishop of Canterbury and Professor of English 
Literature in the University of Cambridge, has written a number 
of delightful essays which reveal a rarely cultured spirit nourished 
on the humanities. His best known volumes are The Upton 
Letters, From a College Window (his own college is Magdalen, 
a charming retreat beside the quiet Cam), The Altar Fire, Beside 
Still Waters, Thy Rod and thy Staff. Gilbert K. Chesterton 

(1874 ) is the most versatile and startlingly paradoxical 

essayist of the century so far. Besides many essays in literary 
criticism, the most striking of which are those on Bernard Shaw, 
he has written on such suggestive subjects as Varied Types, 
Heretics, and Orthodoxy. Chesterton is refreshing and stimulat- 
ing, but so full of unexpected turns of phrase that in the end one is 
likely to be more amazed at his exceeding cleverness than perma- 
nently profited by his thought. At any rate, the attack of this 
master of paradox is immensely interesting while it is in progress. 
The point of view and the method of approach are sure to be new. 

THE DRAMATISTS 

The newer group of English dramatists includes several play- 
wrights who began their work in the late Victorian period, — Jones, 
Pinero, and Shaw; and the "Irish School/ ' among whom the best 
known are Yeats, Synge, and Lady Gregory. Modern drama 
shows clearer technique, more naturalness in speech and action, 
and a preference for current social themes. As in the novel, so 
in the drama we find both realism and romance; the comedy of 
manners reflecting real life flourishes along with romantic comedy 



448 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



and tragedy based on legend. Most modern actable plays are in 
prose; Stephen Phillips 1 (1868-1915) wrote several poetic dramas 
of high merit on ancient and mediaeval subjects, but they are 
too delicate for lasting popularity on the stage. The foreign 
dramatist who had most influence on the form and content of the 
modern English drama was Ibsen, the Norwegian, who died in 
1906. 

Henry Arthur Jones (1851 ). — Henry Arthur Jones, 

dramatic critic and playwright, is a native of Buckinghamshire. 
He has written The Renascence of the English Drama (1896) and 
Foundations of a National Drama (1913), many essays on dramatic 
subjects, and has lectured in America. His plays number thirty- 
five or more, among which The Case of Rebellious Susan (1894), 
Michael and his Lost Angel (1896), The Manoeuvres of Jane (1898), 
and Mrs. Dane's Defense (1900), may be mentioned as specially 
noteworthy. The weaknesses of contemporary society form the 
general subject matter of Jones's plays. The ethical quality is 
often strong. While it would not be proper to call all his plays 
literature, some of them are so vital and so refreshing that they 
have become classics. 

Arthur Wing Pinero (1855 ). — Sir Arthur Wing Pinero was 

born in London, educated in private schools, and knighted in 
1909. He began life as an actor, but after seven or eight years of 
valuable stage experience devoted himself solely to the writing of 
plays. He has written about forty, among which the following 
may be mentioned for their excellent literary quality and dramatic 
merit: Sweet Lavender (1888), Lady Bountiful (1891), The Second 
Mrs. Tanqueray (1893), The Princess and the Butterfly (1897), 
Trelawney of the Wells (1898). Pinero's plays, like those of , 
Jones, have to do with contemporary society, its foibles and its 
virtues, presented in a fresh and striking way with a mingling of 
gentle satire and humor, and sometimes, as in The Second Mrs. 
Tanqueray, not without a vein of tense tragedy. All the plays 
were written with the stage in view, and most of them have proved 



iSee page 410. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY WRITERS 



449 



successful on the boards. For sheer dramatic power, in spite of 
its disagreeable theme, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray is his greatest 
play; while The Princess and the Butterfly is the most charming 
in poetic suggestion. 

George Bernard Shaw (1856 ). — Bernard Shaw, the most 

original and, as some would have it, the most provoking of present- 
day dramatists, is a novelist, critic, socialist, and playwright. He 
was born in Dublm, unconventionally educated, and has spent 
most of his life in London. His first volume of plays he called 
Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898) ; three of these are Arms 
and the Man, Candida, You Never Can Tell. A later volume 
(1900) is called Plays for Puritans; two of these are Caesar and 
Cleopatra, Man and Superman. His more recent dramas are 
Androcles and the Lion and Pygmalion (1914). All of them are 
notable for clear technique, originality of thought, and sprightly 
dialogue. There is generally a pervasive tone of subtle mockery, 
betokening the cynical attitude of a man at war with romantic 
emotion. Shaw is outspoken in his dislike of sentimentalism ; he 
is essentially a satirist and in his way a reformer. 

Other Dramatists. — Contemporary with the foregoing drama- 
tists is Oscar Wilde (1856-1900), poet and playwright, chief 
exponent of the "aesthetic movement," whose "Ballad of Read- 
ing Gaol" and whose plays Lady Windermere's Fan and The 
Importance of Being Earnest are now included in standard col- 
lections — More recent still is the work of Sir James Matthew 

Barrie (1860 ), Scotch novelist and dramatist, whose plays 

The Little Minister, dramatized from the novel, The Admirable 
Crichton, Peter Pan, and What Every Woman Knows, are among 
the most delightful and wholesome of modern comedies. — The 
novelist, John Galsworthy, already discussed, has written 
several volumes of plaj^s on social reform, The Silver Box, Strife, 
Justice, The Mob — admirably constructed, but coldly depressing. 

THE CELTIC (IRISH) GROUP 

William Butler Yeats (1865 ).— Yeats, the best known of 

the new "Irish School," native and resident of Dublin, is 



450 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



descended from a family of artistic instincts and was himself 
educated for art. He has written a number of narrative and 
lyric poems interpreting the old Celtic folk-lore, such as The 
Wanderings of Oisin f The Death of Cuchulain, Baile and Aillinn, 
and The Hosting of the Sidhe (fairies). He has won distinction 
also as a critic. The achievement for which Yeats will, however, 
most likely be held in highest esteem is the organization of the 
Irish National Theatre in which his efforts to popularize Irish 
legends took definite form. He and other patriotic dramatists 
wrote plays in prose and verse to be acted and read. These 
plays deal with Irish life in its legendary, popular, and mystical 
aspects. "The first of these interests . . . centers on Old Irish 
cycle and story; . . . the second of them, on the real and 
contemporary but primitive nature of the people; . . . the 
third, the mystical impulse, . . . has attempted to reclothe 
some of the legendary tales and poems with its own spirit." 1 
Representative plays are The Land of Heart's Desire (1894), 
The Countess Cathleen (1899, revised in 1912 along with The 
Land of Heart's Desire), The Shadowy Waters (1900), Cathleen 
ni Hoolihan (1902), The Hour-Glass (1903), On Baile 1 s Strand 
(1904), The Pot of Broth (1902), Deirdre (1907). 

The Land of Heart's Desire has enjoyed a widespread popu- 
larity, both on account of its theme and the magic of its phrasing. 
The theme is the triumph of the appeal of primitive faith with its 
charm of fairyland enchantment over the newer mandate of 
religious duty in a commonplace world. The "newly-married 
bride" hearkens to the call of release: 

Come, faeries, take me out of this dull house! 
Let me have all the freedom I have lost; 
Work when I will and idle when I will! 
Faeries, come take me out of this dull world, 
For I would ride with you upon the wind, 
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide, 
4nd dance upon the mountains like a flame. 



Oliver Elton: Modern Studies, p. 293. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY WRITERS 



451 



The Countess Cathleen, in the play by that name, is a lady 
bountiful who saves her people in a time of famine. In another 
play, Cathleen ni Hoolihan, the heroine stands for Ireland and 
saves her countrymen by arousing them against foreign oppression. 
The Hour-Glass is a morality play, in which the foolishness of 
knowledge is contrasted with the saving wisdom of a fool. Deirdre, 
the most tragic drama of Yeats, portrays the fate of the beautiful 
queen. After seven years of happiness with her young husband, 
she kills herself when she is being wooed by old King Conchubar, 
who has treacherously murdered Naisa. The unhappy woman, 
conscious of impending doom, recalls to Naisa past joys: 

Do you remember that first night in the woods 
We lay all night on leaves, and looking up, 
When the first grey of the dawn awoke the birds, 
Saw leaves above us? You thought that I still slept, 
And bending down to kiss me on the eyes, 
Found they were open. Bend and kiss me now, 
For it may be the last before our death. 
And when that's over, we'll be different; 
Imperishable things, a cloud or a fire. 
And I know nothing but this body, nothing 
But that old vehement, bewildering kiss. 

Yates's plays are, more properly speaking, dramatic poems, for 
they lack action, but no more exquisite verse has been written 
in this new century. 

John Millington Synge (1871-1909). — In pure dramatic genius, 
John M. Synge stands preeminent in the Celtic group. He was 
born near Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Later 
he traveled on foot and studied in France, Bavaria, and Italy; 
then returned to Ireland, lived in the Aran Islands, and did news- 
paper work. Through the influence of Yeats, he soon became 
interested in the Irish National Theatre and turned playwright. 
His principal plays are Riders to the Sea (1904), The Well of the 
Saints (1905), The Playboy of the Western World (1907), The 
Tinker's Wedding (1909), Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910). Death 
found him at work, having wrought greatly and still full of 



452 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



promise. The plays of Synge are in prose, but the diction has a 
poetic cadence and rhythm; the language has the simplicity and 
raciness of the Irish vernacular; it reflects what Matthew Arnold 
used to call the "natural magic" of the Celtic temperament. 
There is more action and more humor than in Yeats; at times, as 
for instance, in The Playboy of the Western World, there is a riotous, 
farcical movement which reveals the childlike joyousness of the 
Irish peasant, the utter irresponsibility and unpractically of a 
charmingly volatile folk. 

Synge uses the old legends, but is equally successful with con- 
temporary life; he makes folk-lore intensely realistic. 'In dealing 
with the peasant he invests the action with an atmosphere of 
mild irony which is altogether irresistible; in rehabilitating 
ancient sagas, he produces an illusion of reality which evokes the 
sympathy of inward laughter or the pity of repressed tears. He 
is often fantastic, boisterous, extravagant, tender, as the occasion 
and the theme may demand. The Riders to the Sea is the tragedy 
of a mother whose husband and six sons have been swallowed up 
by the tide; it has the unity of a Greek play and the elemental 
simplicity of a Russian short story. Deirdre of the Sorrows ex- 
hibits the primal joyousness of life deepening at last into the 
twilight and night of utter loneliness. The plays are prose-poems 
of throbbing life and primal things. 

Lady Augusta Gregory (1852 ). — Lady Gregory, a native 

of Galway County, Ireland, first showed her interest in Celtic 
literature by publishing several books on old Gaelic folk-lore, in 
which she collected scattered Irish legends and made them 
accessible, very much as Sir Thomas Malory did with the 
Arthurian romances in the fifteenth century. Later on, becoming 
interested in the Irish National Theatre and encouraged by W. B. 
Yeats, she wrote a number of short plays such as The Gaol Gate 
(1906), The Rising of the Moon (1907), McDonough's Wife (1913), 
Spreading the News (1904), Hyacinth Halvey (1906), and The 
Bogie Man (1913). Several of these are little one-act comedies, 
or farces, in which the characters are village folk and peasants. 
They are presented with delightful humor. Lady Gregory 



TWENTIETH CENTURY WRITERS 



453 



"writes easily, has the theatrical sense, and does not let the old 
sagas, or any literary sentiment, get between her and the people." 1 
She is at her best in merry comedy. Her "skill lies in her light 
naturalness." 

THE POETS 

Linking the later Victorians with the present day are several 
well-known poets besides Kipling (already discussed, see page 

436). Robert Bridges (1844 ), who succeeded Alfred Austin 

in 1913 as poet laureate, is the author of readable descriptive 
poems on rural life and domestic scenes, as well as some good 
verse on classic subjects. — William E. Henley (1849-1903), a 
Scotch poet and friend of Stevenson, who spent most of his life 
in London as editor and critic, has written many heartening poems, 
one of the best known beginning — 

Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the Pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul. 

Austin Dobson (1840 ) is the author of some of the most 

graceful light verse in English iiterature, reminiscent of the 
eighteenth century; no one has surpassed him in deftness of 
touch when it comes to society verse or certain French forms, as 
found in his Old World Idylls, Vignettes in Rhyme, and At the 
Sign of the Lyre. — Francis Thompson (1860-1907) wrote many 
rarely beautiful poems out of his own suffering; The Hound of 
Heaven and Ode to the Setting Sun, in which he shows high lyric 

genius, are amongthe most famous. — William Watson (1858 ), 

a diligent student of Milton and W ordsworth, has written much 
verse of fine artistic and ethical quality; several poems are ad- 
dressed to America: "England to America," "To the Invincible 
Republic." 

Of twentieth-century poets the two outstanding names so far 
are John Masefield and Alfred Noyes 



^lton: Modern Studies, p. 313. 



454 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



John Masefield (1875 —),— Masefield has had a varied life; 

he knows the dregs of society as well as the finer flavor; he has 
associated with barroom loafers, with city and country down-and- 
outs, with sailors, with well-to-do people, with soldiers and 
nurses in Flanders. Out of this very real world his poems had 
their origin. In Salt-Water Ballads, one of his earliest volumes 
of verse, he declares: 

Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road, 

The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad, 

The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load. 

Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth, 

The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth; — 

Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth ! 

Struggle, suffering, defeat, — these interest him, and he makes them 
interesting to the reader; and yet what he most cares for is not 
simply struggle, suffering, defeat as such, but for the intensity of 
living w ich they involve. Masefield loves the sensation of life 
and transfers it to his readers; he has sentiment, too; and because 
his poetry is saturated with life and sentiment he is popular. He 
is a realist, of course, but he is first of all an impressionist; he lets 
you see the thing or the person through his eyes. His material 
may be sordid, his poetry may read like prose, but somehow he 
wins your sympathy and stirs your imagination. He loves ships 
because they contend with the waves and he loves men most, as 
one critic has noted, when they are driven by storms of passion 
or adversity and either wrecked or barely rescued. In the living 
present Masefield finds more romance than in the past ; his is the 
poetry of the common man. Some of his best work is found in 
The Daffodil Fields, The Everlasting Mercy, The Widow in 
the Bye Street, The Story of a Round- House, and A Mainsail 
Haul. His prose Tragedy of Nan is one of the most powerful 
dramas in modern literature. 

Alfred Noyes (1880 ).— Very different from Masefield is 

Alfred Noyes, though he rivals his contemporary in popularity. 
Noyes is a native of Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, and an 



TWENTIETH CENTURY WRITERS 



455 



Oxford graduate; he has been for some years Visiting Professor of 
English Literature in Princeton University, and has read his 
poems and lectured in various parts of the United States. As a 
poet Noyes is chiefly interested in the romance of England's 
glorious past, which is the background of his most ambitious 
verse. His longest poem is Drake: An English Epic, in which he 
celebrates the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the heroism of 
the great Elizabethan sea-captain. In the Tales of the Mermaid 
Tavern we have a number of breezy lyrics from the frequenters of 
that enchanted place, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson, and 
Raleigh, jolly good fellows, whom we are glad to meet again, 
even though they are a trifle over-sentimentalized. No other 
recent poet, indeed, has shown such fine enthusiasm for that full- 
blooded age or for England's splendid triumphs on the sea. 
Forty Singing Seamen is one of the most spirited lyric poems in 
English literature. In addition to its rhythmic beauty, at times 
too reminiscent of Tennyson, the poetry of Noyes has a distinct 
ethical quality and a nobility of sentiment which show his kinship 
to the Victorians. The moralist is strong in this romantic poet. 
He assumes that we have departed from the ancient standards of 
duty and faith, and that we need to be rallied out of our easy- 
going materialism. This is the burden of that ringing appeal. 
'The Trumpet-Call," in the volume entitled The Lord of Misrule, 
beginning — 

Trumpeter, sound for the ancient heights! 
Clouds of the earth-born battle cloak 
The heaven that our fathers held from of old. 

It is the voice of an idealist heartening the present through the 
memory of an heroic past. 

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915). — This young poet was born at 
Rugby and educated at King's College, Cambridge. Early in the 
World War he volunteered for service in the British Navy and 
went with the Antwerp expedition; in February, 1915, he sailed 
with the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force as a sub-lieutenant 
in the Royal Naval Reserve. On his way to the Dardanelles he 



456 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



died from blood poisoning, and was buried on the Greek island of 
Skyros in the Aegean Sea. The fate of Rupert Brooke, who 
perished in the vigor of his early manhood for the noble cause of 
liberty, links his name and fame with Sir Philip Sidney and Lord 
Byron. One poem in particular, among many rarely beautiful 
lyrics, has touched the heart of the English-speaking world 
because of its exquisite harmony of phrase and sentiment and 
its personal application to the dead poet. It is the sonnet entitled 
'The Soldier": 

If I should die, think only this of me: 

That there's some corner of a foreign field 
That is forever England. There shall be 

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; 
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 

Gave once her flowers to love, her ways to roam, 
A body of England's, breathing English air, 

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. 

And think this heart, all evil shed away, 

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; 

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; 

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, 

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. 

SOME USEFUL BOOKS 

Cooper's Some English Story-Tellers (Holt), Phelps's Essays on Modern 
Novelists (Macmillan), Jones's The Foundation of a National Drama, 
Hamilton's The Theory of the Theatre (Baker-Taylor Co.), Hunt's The 
Play of To-day, Hale's Dramatists of To-day, Henderson's George Bernard 
Shaw, Boyd's The Irish Literary Renaissance, Elton's Modern Studies 
(Living Irish Literature), Weygandt's Irish Plays and Playwrights, Howe's 
J. M. Synge: A Critical Study, Krans's William Butler Yeats and the Irish 
Literary Revival, Borsa's The English Stage of To-day, Dickinson's Chief 
Contemporary Dramatists (selected plays) (Houghton), "Writers of the 
Day" (Holt): brief biographies and appreciations of Bennett, Conrad, 
Galsworthy, Kipling, and Wells; Clarke's A Treasury of War Poetry 
(Houghton). 

See Index to Periodical Literature for last ten years. 



INDEX 



Titles of books, poems, plays, essays, etc., are in italics. 

The pronunciation of every name likely to give trouble is indicated at simply as possible. 



Abraham and Isaac: 104. 

Absalom and Achitophel (a chit 'o fel): 206. 

Abt Vogler (aptfo gler): 401. 

Adam Bede:42i, 425. 

Addison, Joseph: life, 219; personality, 221; 

works, 222; poems, 222; Spectator, 223, style 

and influence, 225. 
Advancement of Learning: 152. 
Adonais (ado na'is):324. 
Aelfric (Alfric), Homilies of: 34. 
Aeneid, Dryden's translation: 207. 
Age of Pope: characteristics, 215; outline of, 

244 ; books on, 245. 
Agincourt (a zhan koor), Battle of: 100. 
Aids to Reflection: 312. 
Alastor: 322. 
Alchemist, The: 141. 
Alexander Cycle, The: 43. 
Alfred The Great, Account of: 32-34. 
All for Love: 205. 
Alysoun : 49. 
Amelia: 259. 

Amoretti (a mo ret 'tee): 97. 
Anatomy of Melancholy: 148, 188. 
Ancient Mariner, The: 312. 
Ancren Riwle (angk ren rule): 46, 47. 
Andrea delSarto: 400. 
Andreas: 30. 

Anglo-Norman Period: 36. 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: 34, 38. 
Anglo-Saxon Period: 13; Poetry, 16; Prose, 
31. 

Anglo-Saxons, Religion and Traits of: 17, 18. 
Annus Mirabilis: 208. 

Apologia pro Vita Sua (Defense of his own 

Life): 382. 
Apparition of Mrs. Veal: 254. 
Arcadia : 98, 148. 

Areopagitica (ar e op a git'i ca): 176, 180. 
Arnold, Matthew: life, 378; as a poet, 379; as 

critic, 380; his style, 381. 
Arthurian Cycle, The: 43. 
Ascham (askajp. )_,_Roger: 81-82. 
Astropheland Stella (as'trofel): 99. 
Atalantain Calydon (kal'y don): 409. 
Aurora Leigh : 405. 

Austen, Jane: life, 334; works, 335; her realism, 
335; Scott's tribute to, 336. 



Bacon, Francis: life, 150; works and contri- 
bution, 152. 
Balder Dead: 379. 
Ballads, The: 77, 283. 
Barchester Towers: 432. 
Bard, The: 2S6. 
Barrack-Room Ballads: 436. 
BARRrE, J ames M . : 449. 
Battle of the Books: 231, 232. 
Battle of Brunanburgh: 34. . 
Battle of Maldon, The: 25, 34. 
Beattie, James : 280. 
Beaumont, Francis: 143. 
Beaux' Stratagem: 211. 
Becket: 394. 

Bede ("Venerable Bede"): 26, 27, 29. 
Beggar's Opera, The: 244. 
Bells and Pomegranates: 399. 
Bennett, Arnold: 445. 
Benson, Arthur C: 447. 
Beowulf (ba'owolf): story of, 20; characteris- 
tics of, 22. 
Beets of Hampton: 43. 

Bible, Translations of: Wyclif's, 69; Tyn- 

dale's, 82; King James's, 154. 
Bicker staff Almanac: 223. 
Biographia Liter aria : 312, 313. 
Bishop, Orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's 

Church: 400. 
Blackmore, Richard D.: 434. 
Blackwood' s Magazine: 343. 
Blair, Robert: 280. 

Blake, William: the mystic, 296; relation to 
Wordsworth, 296; pioneer Romanticist, 297. 

Blank Verse: Surrey's, 84; Marlowe's, 116; 
Milton's, 187. 

Bleak House: 415. 

Blessed Damozel: 406. 

Blot in the' Scutcheon, A: 401. 

Boethius' (bo e'thi us) Consolation of Phil- 
osophy : 33-34. 

Book of the Duchesse: 58. 

Borough, The: 2%. 

Boswell, James: 263, 265, 266, 269. 

Boswell's Life of Johnson: 269. 

Bridges, Robert: 453. 

Bristowe Tragedie: 283. 

Britannia's Pastorals: 161. 



(457 ) 



458 



INDEX 



Britons, The: 14. 
Broken Heart, The: 146. 
Bronte, Charlotte: 430. 
Brooke, Rupert: 455. 
Browne, Sir Thomas: 190. 
Browne, William: 161. 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: life, 404; 
works, 405; sonnets, 405. 

Browning, Robert: life, 396; personality, 398; 
works, 399; dramatic monologues, 400; dram- 
as, 401; characteristics, 402; message, 403. 

Brut, Layamon's: 40, 41, 43. 

Btjlwer-Lytton: 430. 

Buntan, John: life, 192; works and influence, 
193. 

Burke, Edmund: life, 273; works and charac- 
teristics, 274 ; great speeches of, 275. 

Burnet, Frances (Madame D'Arblay): 262. 

Burns, Robert: life, 290; personality, 2E2; 
works, 292; characteristics, 294: source of his 
poetry, 294. 

Burton, Robert: 188. 

Butler, Samuel: 208. 

Byron, George Gordon: life, 314; personality, 
317; works, 317; literary characteristics, 318. 

Caedmon (kad mon), Account of: 27-29. 

Caine, Hall: 446. 

Caleb Williams : 334. 

Campbell Thomas: 332. 

Campion, Thomas: 101. 

Canterbury Tales, The: 60-65. 

Captain Singleton: 254. 

Carlyle, Thomas: life, 364; personality, 367, 
works, 368; style, 370; message, 371. 

Casa Guidi Windows (ka sa gwee dee): 405. 

Castle of Indolence, The: 280. 

Castle ofOtranto: 263, 333. 

Castle Rackrent: 334. 

Catiline: 142. 

Cavalier: 159; poets, 168. 

Caxton, William: 78. 

Celts, Influence of: 14, 15. 

Cenci, The (chen'chee): 323. 

Changeling, The: 145. 

Chapman, George: 100. 

Charlemagne Cycle, The: 43. 

Chatterton, Thomas: 282. 

Chaucer, Followers of: 76. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey: life, 55; personality, 57; 
works, 57; contribution, 65; language, 67. 

Chevy Chace: 77. 

Cherry-Ripe: 102. 

Chester Plays: 106. 

Chesterton, Gilbert K.: 447. 



Childe Harold:Zl&. 

Child in the House, The: 383. 

Chivalry in Middle Ages: 39. 

Christ, The (Anglo-Saxon poem): 30. 

Christ's Victory and Triumph: 161. 

Christabel: 313. 

Christianity in Britain: 25. 

Citizen of the World, The: 271. 

Clarissa Harlowe: 257, 262. 

Classic Influence on Drama: 108. 

Classicism: 201, 217, 235, 242, 278. 

Cloister and t he Hearth : 432. 

Clough (kluff ), Arthur Hugh: 410. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: life, 309, person- 
ality, 311; works, 312; theory of poetry, 312; 
literary characteristics, 313; critic, 313. 

Colin Clout's Come Home Again: 97. 

Collier, Jeremy: 211. 

Collins, Wilkie: 433. 

Collins, William: 281. 

Comedy of Manners: 210. 

Complaint to Pity : 58. 

Complete Angler: 191. 

Conciliation with American Colonies: 274, 275. 

Confessio Amantis: 70. 

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater: 350. 

Congreve, William: 211. 

Conrad, Joseph: 443. 

Cotter's Saturday Night: 299. 

Court Plays: 117. 

Coventry Plays: 106. 

Coverdale, Miles: 82-83. 

Cowley, Abraham: 167. 

Cowper, William: life, 287; works, 288; char- 
acteristics, 290. 

Crabbe, George: 295. 

Cranford: 433. 

Crashaw, Richard: 166. 

Criticism: Dryden's 208; Coleridge's, 313; ap- 
preciative, 344; Arnold's, 380. 

Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: 370. 

Crown of Wild Olive: 376. 

Cry of the Children: ' 405. 

Cuckoo Song : 49. 

Cuchulain (ku hulin): 450. 

Culture and Anarchy : 380. 

Cur a Pastoralis (Pastoral Care): 33. 

Curse of Kehama (ke ha 'ma): 330. 

Cursor Mundi: 46-47. 

Cynewulf (kin e wolf), Poems of: 29-30. 

D'Arblay, Madame (Fanny Burney): 262. 
Daniel (Anglo-Saxon poem): 28. 
Darwin, Charles: 384. 
David Copperfield: 416, 



INDEX 



459 



Debate of the Body and the Soul, The: 48. 
Deor's Complaint: 19. 
Defence of Poesie: 98, 99. 

Defoe, Daniel: life, 251; personality, 252; 

works and characteristics, 252. 
Deirdre (da thre): 450, 452. 
Dekker, Thomas: 144. 
De Morgan, W. F.: 443. 

De Qtjincey, Thomas: life, 348; personality, 
349; works, 350; characteristics, 351. 

Deserted Village, The: 272. 

Diary, Pepys's: 212; Evelyn's, 213. 

Dickens, Charles: life, 413; personality, 413; 
novels, 414; philanthropic purpose, 415; char- 
acteristics, 416. 

Dictionary, Johnson's: 265, 267, 268. 

Discourses in America (Arnold's): 381. 

Dobson, Austin: 453. 

Dombey and S071: 415. 

Domestic Drama: 117. 

Don Juan (don hwan or anglicized): 318. 

Donne (dun) John: 163. 

Douglas, Gaw-ain: 77. 

Doyle, A. Con an: 446. 

Drama: religious beginnings, 102; miracle plays, 
103; morality plays, 106; interludes, 107; folk 
plays, 108; classical influence, 108; first com; 
edy and tragedy, 109; Elizabethan, 111; 
Restoration, 209. 

Drapier Letters: 234. 

Drayton, Michael: 100. 

Dream of the Rood (Cross): 30. 

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: 428. 

Drummond, William: 162. 

Dry den, John: life, 202; personality, 204; 
works and influence, 205 ; dramas, 205; satires, 
205; translations, 207; criticisms, 208. 

Duchess of Malfi, The: 145. 

Dunbar, William: 77. 

Dunciad, The: 240. 

Earthly Paradise, The: 408. 

Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 

The: 27, 33. 
Ecclesiastical Polity: 148. 
Edge worth, Maria: 334. 
Edinburgh Review: 343. 
Edward II: 115. 

Elegy in a Country Churchyard: 285, 286. 
Elene (el'e ne): 30. 

Eliot, George (Mary Ann Evans) : life, 422 
personality, 423; novels, 424; style, 425. 

Elizabethan Age: characteristics, 86; poetry, 
91 ; drama, 111 ; prose, 147. 



Elizabethan London: 89-90. 

Elizabethan Poetry (Non-Dramatic): 91. 

Empedocles on Etna (em ped'o cles): 379. 

England's Helicon: 101. 

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers: 318. 

English Humourists, The: 420. 

Epicoene (ep y seen): 141. 

Epipsychidion (ep i sy kid'ion): 223. 

Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot: 242. 

Epithalamium (ep i tha la'mi um): 97. 

Essays: Bacon's, 152; Macaulay's, 362. 

Essays in Criticism: 380. 

Essay of Dramatic Poesy (Dryden's): 208. 

Essays of Elia: 347. 

Essay on Burns: 368. 

Essay on Criticism (Pope's): 238. 

Essay on Liberty (Mill's): 385. 

Essay on Man: 241. 

Essay on Milton: 362. 

Essayists of Victorian Era: 359. 

Etheredge, George: 211. 

Ethics of the Dust: 377. 

Endymion: 328. 

Endymion (Lyly's): 112. 

Euganean Hills, Lines on the (u ga'ne an): 323. 

Euphues (u'fu ez): 112, 147. 

Euphuism (footnote): 112. 

Evans, Mary Ann (see George Eliot): 422. 

Eve of St. Agnes: 329. 

Evelina: 262. 

Evelyn (ev e lin), John: 213. 
Everyman: 106. 

Every Man in his Humour: 141. 
Excelente Balade of Charitie: 283. 
Exodus (Anglo-Saxon poem): 28. 

Fables: Dryden's, 208; Gay's, 243. 

Faerie Queene, The: 93. 

Fair Maid of the West, The: 145. 

Fair Margaret and Sweet William: 78. 

Farquhar, George: 211. 

Fates of the Apostles: 30. 

Faustus: 115. 

Fergusson, Robert: 281. 

Ferrex and Porrex: 110. 

Feudalism, Definition of: 39. 

Fielding, Henry: life, 258; works and char- 
acteristics, 259; compared with Richardson, 
260. 

Fight at Finnsburgh, The: 25. 
First Folio Shakespeare: 127. 
Fitzgerald, Edward: 410. 
Fletcher, John: 143. 
Fletcher, Giles: 161. 



460 



INDEX 



Fletcher, Phineas: 161. 
Flight of a Tartar Tribe: 350. 
Folk Plays: 108. 
Ford, John: 146. 
Forest, The: 142. 
Four Georges, The: 420. 
Four P's, The: 107. 

French Influence on Literature: 200. 
French Revolution: 300. 
French Revolution (Carlyle's): 370. 
Froude, James Anthony: 383. 
Fuller, Thomas: 189. 

Galsworthy, John: 444, 449. 

Gammer Gurton's Needle: 110. 

Gaskell, Elizabeth: 433. 

Gascoigne, George: 100. 

Garrick, David: 265, 266, 271, 276. 

Gawayne (gaw'ain) and the Green Knight: 44. 

Gay, John: 243. 

Gebir (ga bcr'): 353. 

Genesis (Anglo-Saxon poem): 28, 29. 

Gentle Shepherd, The: 281. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth: 40, 80. 

Gibbon, Edward: life, 277; history, 277; style, 
277; Memoirs, 278. 

Gleeman (minstrel): 25. 

Goldsmith, Oliver: life, 269; personality, 271 
works and style, 271; his humor, 273; John- 
eon's tribute to, 273. 

Goodnatured Man, The: 272. 

Gorboduc: 100, 110. 

Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions: 101. 
Gouvernail of Princes: 76. 
Gower, John: 70. 
Grace Abounding: 193. 
Grave, The: 280. 

Gray, Thomas: life, 284; works, 285; character- 
istics, 286. 
Greene, Robert: 112. 
Gregory, Augusta: 452. 
Gulliver's Travels: 232, 233, 235. 
Guy of Warwick: 43. 

Hakluyt (hak'loot), Richard: 87. 
Hardy, Thomas: 435. 
Hastings, Battle of: 36. 
Havelock The Dane: 43. 
Hawkins, Anthony Hope: 446. 
Hazlitt, William: 351. 
Heart of Midlothian: 341. 
Hebrew Melodies: 318. 
Henley, William E.: 453. 
Henry Esmond: 420, 421. 
Herbert, George: 165. 



Hero and Leander: 101, 114. 

Heroes and Hero-Worship: 369. 

Heroic Couplet: Waller's use of, 167; Dryden's 
201, 205, 206; Pope's, 242; Johnson's, 267; By- 
ron's imitation of Pope's, 318. 

Heroic Plays: 210. 

Herrick, Robert: 171. 

Hesperides: 171. 

Hewlett, Maurice: 446. 

Heywood, John: 107. 

Heywood, Thomas: 145. 

Hilda, Abbess: 27, 28. 

Hind and the Panther: 208. 

Historical Drama: 117. 

History of England: Macaulay's, 362; Froude's, 
384. 

History of Henry VII (Bacon's): 153. 
History of the World (Raleigh's): 149. 
Hoccleve, Thomas: 76. 
Holy Living and Dying: 189. 
Holy War: 193. 

Homer: Chapman's translation, 100; Pope's 
translation, 240; Cowper's translation, 289. 
Hooker, Richard: 149. 
Hours of Idleness: 317. 
House of Fame: 59. 
House of Life, The: 407. 
Hudibras (hu'di bras): 208. 
Humours, Comedy of: 141; Ben Johnson's, 141. 
Humphrey Clinker: 261. 
Hunt, Leigh: 352. 
Huxley, Thomas H.: 384. 
Hyde Park: 146. 
Hypatia (hi pa'shi a): 433. 

Idea of Comedy: 434. 

Idea of a University, The: 382. 

Idler, The: 267. 

Idylls of the King: 391-392. 

Imaginary Conversations: 353. 

In Memoriam: 392-394. 

Interludes: 107. 

Intimations of Immortality: 308. 

Irene (Johnson's play): 265. 

Irish\Melodies: 331. 

Ivanhoe: 341. 

Jane Eyre (air): 431. 
Jeffrey, Francis: 343, 344. 
Jew of Malta, The: 115. 
John Gilpin 289. 

Johnson, Samuel: life, 263; personality, 266; 
works and characteristics, 267; Bosw ell's life 
of, 269; friendship for Goldsmith, 270. 

Jones, Henry A.: 448. 



INDEX 



461 



Jonson, Ben: life, 139; personality, 140; works 

and influence, 141. 
Joseph Andrews: 259. 
Journal of the Plague Year: 254. 
Journal to Stella: 229, 234. 
Judith (Anglo-Saxon poem): 29. 
Juliana: 30. 
Jutes, The: 13. 

Keats, John: life, 324; personality, 327; poetry 

of, 327; love of beauty, 329. 
King Horn : 43. 
King Johan: 107, 117. 
Kingis Quair, The: 76. 
Kingsley, Chaeles: 432. 
Kipling, Rudyabd: 436. 
Knight's Tale, The: 64. 
Kulba Khan (kube la can): 313. 
Kyd, Thomas: 113. 

Lady of the Lake: 339. 
Lady of Lyons: 430. 
Lalla Rookh :S31. 

Lamb, Chaeles: life, 345; personality, 346; 

works, 346; Essays of Elia, 347; letters, 348. 
Landoe, Waltee Savage: 352. 
Lan gland, William: 67. 
Laodamia (la od a mi'a): 306. 
Last Days of Pompeii (pom pa 'ye): 430. 
Lay of the Last Minstrel: 339. 
Layamon's Brut: 40, 80. 
Lays of Ancient Rome: 363. 
Lead, Kindly Light: 382. 

Lectures on Shakespeare (Coleridge's): 312, 314. 

Legend of Good Women: 59, 60. 

Letter to Chesterfield (Johnson's): 268. 

Lewes (lew es), Geoege Henby: 423. 

Liberty of Prophesying : 189. 

Life of John Sterling: 370. 

Life of Nelson: 331. 

Life of Scott (Lockhart's): 344. 

Liteeaey Club, The: 263, 266, 274. 

Literature and Dogma: 380. 

Little Dorrit: 415. 

Lives of the Poets: 268. 

Locke, William J . : 446. . 

Lockhaet, John Gibson: 344. 

London (Johnson's poem): 267. 

Lorna Doone: 434. 

Love for Love: 211. 

Lovelace, Richaed: 169. 

Love Rune: 48. 

Lydgate, John: 76. 

Lyly (lily), John: 112. 



Lyrical Ballads, The: 297, 305, 308. 
Lytton, Edwaed Bulwee: 430. 

Macaulay, Thomas B.: life, 360; personality, 
361; works, 362; literary characteristics, 363. 
Mac Flecknoe: 207. 
Macpheeson, James: 283. 
Magazines, Rise of Modeen: 343. 
Maid's Tragedy, The: 143. 
Maloey, Sie Thomas: 80. 
Mandeville's Travels: 70. 
Manfred: 318. 

Marino Faliero (ma ree'no fal ya'ro): 318. 
Markheim: 428. 

Maelowe, Cheistophee: life, 113; works, 114; 
contribution, 116; verse, 116. 

Martin Chuzzlewit: 415. 

Maevel, Andeew: 168. 

Masefield, John : 454. 

Masques: Early, 108; Ben Johnson's, 142. 

Masque of Queens: 142. 

Massingee, Philip: 146. 

Maud: 391. 

Mazeppa: 318. 

Memoirs of a Cavalier: 254. 

Meeedith, Geoege: 434. 

Metaphysical Poets: 162. 

Michael: 306. 

Middlemarch: 425. 

Middleton, Thomas: 145. 

Mill, John Stuaet: 384. 

Mill on the Floss: 424 , 426. 

Milton, John: life, 172; personality, 177; works, 
178; minor poems, 178; prose, 180; sonnets, 181; 
later poems, 182; characteristics, and contri- 
bution, 187; compared with Shakespeare, 187. 

Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: 339. 

Minstrel, The: 280. 

Mieacle Plays: 103. 

Mirror for Magistrates, The: 100. 

Modern Painters: 374. 

Modest Proposal, A: 234. 

Moll Flanders: 254. 

Montague, Lady Maey W.: 276. 

Moral Ode, The: 46. 

Moeality Plays: 106. 

Mooee, Thomas: 331. 

M oee , Sie Thomas : 76 , 81 . 

Moeeis, William: 407. 

Morte d' Arthur (mort darther): 80. 

Mother Hubbard's Tale: 97. 

My Last Duchess: 400. 

New Atlantis: 153. 
Newcomes, The: 420, 421. 



462 



INDEX 



Newman, John Henry: 381. 

New Way to Pay Old Debts: 146. 

Nicholas Nickleby : 415. 

Night Thoughts :2U. 

Noah's Flood : 104. 

Noctes Ambrosianae: 344. 

Norman Conquest, Effects of: 37. 

Normandy, Loss of: 39. 

Northanger (an, er) Abbey: 335. 

North, Christopher (John Wilson): 344. 

Novel: orerunners of, 249; definition of, 255; 

first modern, 256; psychological, 425. 
Novelists , First English : 256-263. 
Novelists of Victorian Era: 411. 
Noyes, Alfred: 454. 
Novum Organum: 152. 
Nun's Priest's Tale, The: 65. 

Ode to Duty: 306. 

Ode to Evening: 281. 

Ode to a Nightingale: 329. 

Ode to the Passions :281. 

Odetothe West Wind: 223. 

Odes, Pindaric: Cowley's, 167; Gray's, 287. 

Old Curiosity Shop: 415. 

Old Fortunatus: 144. 

Oliver Twist: 415. 

Olney Hymns : 288. 

Ordea t of Richard Feverel: 434. 

Origin of Species: 384. 

Ormulum : 46. 

Orosius' Universal History: 33. 
Ossian (cshian), Poems of: 283. 
Otway, Thomas: 210. 
Owl and the Nightingale, The: 48. 

Pamela (pam 'e la): 256, 257, 258. 
Paradise Lost: 182. 
Paradise of Dainty Devices: 101. 
Paradise Regained: 185. 

Paraphrase, (attributed to Caedmon): 28, 29. 

Parliament of Fowls (Birds): 60. 

Pater, Walter: 383. 

Pearl, 77ie:45,46. 

Peele, George: 112. 

Pendennis : 420, 421. 

Pepys (peps, peeps, or pep is), Samuel: 212. 
Percy , Bishop : collection of ballads, 283 ; influ- 
ence of ,284. 
Peregrine Pickle: 261. 
Periodical Literature, Rise of: 216. 
Petrarch: 74, 84, 97. 
Phoenix (fenix), The: 30. 
Philosophy of Style: 385. 
Phillips, Stephen: 410, 448. 



Philaster: 143. 

Phillpotts, Eden: 446. 

Pickwick Papers : 414. 

Piers the Plowman, Vision of: 68. 

Pilgrim's Progress: 193. 

Pindaric Odes: 167. 

Pinero, Arthur W.: 448. 

Pippa Passes: 401. 

Pleasures of Memory: 332. 

Pleasures of Hope: 332. 

Plutarch: 148. 

Poets of Victorian Era: 385. 
Polyolbion : 100. 

Pope, Alexander: life, 235; personality, 237; 
works, 238; literary characteristics and influ- 
ence, 242 ; his verse, 242, 243. 

Porter, Jane: 343. 

Prelude, The: 306. 

Pre-Raphaelites: 375, 406. 

Pride and Prejudice: 336. 

Princess, The :Z90. 

Printing, Invention or: 78. 

Prior, Matthew :243. 

Prisoner of Chillon: 318. 

Prometheus Unbound (pro me'the us): 324. 

Prothalamium (pro tha la 'mi um): 97. 

Puritan and Cavalier: 158, 159. 

Puritan Period: characteristics, 157; poetry, 
160; prose, 187; outline of, 196; books on, 196. 

Purple Island, The: 161. 

Quarterly Review: 343. 
Queen Mab : 322. 
Queen of the Air: 377. 

Radcliffe, Anne: 262, 333. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter: 148. 

Ralph Roister Doister: 109. 

Rambler, The: 268. 

Ramsay, Allan :281. 

Rape of the Lock: 239. 

Rasselas: 268. 

Reade, Charles: 432. 

Recessional , The: 437. 

Reflections ont he French Revolution: 275. 

Reformation: 73, 82, 158. 

Religio Laid : 208. 

Religio Medici: 190. 

Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: 283. 
Renaissance (re nl sans', rena'sance): period 

of, 73, 74 ; flood-tide of , 86 ; spell of, 97. 
Restoration Period : 198. 
Return oft he Native: 435. 
Revival of Learning: 74, 76, 81. 
Revolt of Islam: 322. 



INDEX 



463 



Reynolds, Sir Joshua: 266, 270. 
Rhyme Royal: 67 , 1 33. 

Richardson, Samuel: life, 256; novels, 257. 

Richelieu (reesh loo): 430. 

Rights of Man: 301. 

Ring and the Book, The: 402. 

Rivals, The: 273, 276. 

Robinson Crusoe: 253, 255. 

Roderick: 330. 

Roderick Random: 261. 

Rogers, Samuel: 332. 

Romance of the Rose: 58. 

Romantic Drama: 117. 

Romanticism: defined, 278; characteristics, 
278-280; poets of, 278; prose writers of, 332; 
greater Romantic poets, 302; minor Romantic 
poets, 330 ; books on, 299, 355. 

Romola (rom'o la): 424, 425. 

Rosalind: 148. 

Rossetti, Christina: 407. 

Rossetti, D. G.:406. 

Rusken, John: life, 372; art critic, 374; social 
reformer, 375; style, 377. 

Sackville, Thomas: 100. 
Samson Agonistes: 186. 
Sartor Resartus: 369. 

Satire: definition of, 201, 205; Dryden's, 205; 

Swift's, 231; Pope's, 240; Byron's, 318; verae 

235,242. 
Saul: 401. 
Saxons, The: 13. 
School for Scandal, The: 273, 276. 
Schoolmaster, The: 82. 
Scop (poet) :24. 
Scotch Poets , The: 280. 

Scott, Walter: life, 336; personality, 338; 

poetry, 339; novels, 340; contribution, 342. 
Scottish Chiefs: 343. 
Seafarer, The: 19,20. 
Seasons, The: 280. 
Second Shepherd's Play: 105. 
Sejanus: 142. 

Sense and Sensibility : 335. 
Sesame and Lilies: 376. 
Sentimental J ourney : 262. 
Seven Lamps of Architecture: 375. 
Seven Seas, 77ie:436. 

Shakespeare, William: life, 120; personality, 
125; dramatic works, 12G; four periods, 127 ; 
doubtful plays, 131; sources of plays, 131 ; 
non-dramatic poetry, 132; sonnets, 133; char- 
acteristics and influence, 135. 

Shaw , G eorge Bernard : 449. 

She Stoops to Conquer: 272. 



Shelley, Percy Bysshe: life, 319; personality, 
321; poetry of, 322; literary characteristics, 
323, and Byron, 314. 

Shepherd's Calendar : 96. 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley: 273, 276. 

Shirley, James : 146. 

Shoemaker's Holiday: 144. 

Short Studies on Great Subjects: 384. 

Sidney, Sir Philip : 98. 

Sigurdthe Volsung: 408. 

Silas Marner :425. 

Silent Woman, The: 141. 

Sinclair, May: 446. 

Sir Charles Grandison: 257. 

Sir Patrick Spens : 78. 

Sir Roger de Coverley Papers: 224. 

Smollett, Tobias: 261. 

Sohrab and Rustum ;379. 

Songs of Experience . ,-296. 

Songs of Innocence . 296. 

Sonnet, Introduction of : 84. 

Sonnets from 1 - he Portuguese: 405. 

Sonneteers, The : 99. 

Sonnets: Shakespeare's, 133; Milton's, 181; 

Wordsworth's, 306; Mrs. Browning's, 405; 

Rossetti's, 407. 
Southey, Robert: 302, 330. 
Spanish Tragedy, The: 113, 146. 
Specimens of English Dramatic Poets: 347. 
Spectator, The: 223, 225. 
Spencer, Herbert: 384. 

Spencer, Edmund: life, 91; personality, 92; 
works, 93; Spenserian Stanza, 95, 279; con- 
tribution, 97. 

Spenserian Poets: 160. 

Steele, Richard: life, 226; personality, 226; 

works, 227 ; comedies, 227; Tatler, 227. 
Steel Glass, The:lW. 
Sterne, Lawrence: 261. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis: life, 426; person- 
ality, 427; works, 428; essayist, 383, 429; 
style, 429. 

Stevenson, William: 110. 

Stones of Venice: 375. 

Story of Thebes: 76. 

Suckling, Sir John: 169. 

Supposes, The: 100. 

Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of: 83. 

Swift, Jonathan: life, 228; personality, 230; 
works, 231 ; satires, 231 ; characteristics, 234. 

Swinburne, Charles Algernon: 408. 

Synge, John M.:451. 

Table Talk: Cowper's, 288; Hazlitt's, 352. 
Tale of a Tub: 231, 232. 



464 



INDEX 



Tale of Two Cities: 416. 
Tales from Shakespeare: 346. 
Tales of the Hall: 296. 
Tamburlaine: 114, 116. 
Tarn O'Shanter: 293. 
Task, The: 288. 
Tatler, The: 223, 227, 228. 
Taylor, Jeremy: 189. 
Temple, The: 165. 

Tennyson, Alfred: life, 385; personality, 388; 

works, 389; characteristics and teaching, 394. 
Tess of the D' Urbervilles: 436. 
Thackeray, William M.: life, 417; personality, 

418; works, 419; lectures, 420; characteristics, 

421. 

Theater: Elizabethan, 117; the first, 117; clos- 
ing of theaters, 147. 
Thomas of Hales : 48. 
Thompson, Francis: 453. 
Thomson , James : 280. 
Thyrsis (ther'sis): 379,410. 
Timber: US. 
Tintern Abbey: 306, 307. 
Tom Jones: 259,260. 
TotteVs Miscellany: 84. 
Towneley Plays: 106. 
Toxophilus (toxof'ilus): 82. 
Traveler, The: 271. 
Treasure Island : 427. 
Tristram Shandy: 261. 
Trivia , Gay's: 244. 

Troilus and Criseyde (Chaucer's): 59. 
Trollope, Anthony: 431. 
Troy Cycle, The:*3. 
Tyndale, William: 81. 

Udall (u dall), Nicholas: 109. 

Udolpho (udolfo), Mysteries of: 263, 333. 

Underwoods: 142. 

Urn-Burial: 190. 

Utopia: 81, 100. 

Vanity Fair: 419, 421. 

Vanity of Human Wishes: 267. 

Vaughan, Henry: 166. 

Venice Preserved : 210. 

Vicar of Wakefield: 262, 270, 272. 



Victorian Era: spread of democracy, 356; 

scientific spirit, 357; variety of literature, 

358; bibliography, 440. 
Village, The: 295. 

Virgil: Sun ey's translation, 84; Dryden's, 207. 

Virginians, The: 420, 421. 

Vision of Judgment, The: Byron's, 318; South- 

ey's, 330. 
Volpone (vol po'ne): 141. 
Voyages and Discoveries: 148. 

Wace:40,41,43. 
Waller, Edmund: 167. 
Walpole, Horace: 263, 276, 333. 
Walton, Izaak: 190. 
Wanderer, The: 20. 
Watson , William: 453. 
Waverley: 340, 341. 
Way of the World: 211. 
Wealth of Nations: 301. 
Webster, J ohn : 145. 
Wells, Herbert George: 445. 
Wessex, Kingdom of: 32. 
Westward Ho: 433. 
Whitby, Monastery of: 27. 
Widsith, or Far-Traveler: 19. 
Wilde, Oscar : 449. 

Wilson, John (Christopher North): 344. 

Winchester, Alfred's capital: 34. 

Wisdom of the Ancients: 153. 

Wither, George: 162. 

Woman Killed with Kindness: 145. 

Wordsworth, Dorothy: 304. 

Wordsworth, William: life, 302; personality, 
305; works, 305; source and inspiration of hia 
poetry, 307; his theory of poetry, 309. 

Worthies of England: 190. 

Wyatt, Sir Thomas: 83-84. 

Wycherley, William: 211. 

Wyclif, John: 69-70. 

Wyrd (Goddess of Fate): 18, 20, 26. 

Yeats, William Butler: 449. 

York Plays: 106. 
Young, Edward: 244. 

Zangwill, Israel: 447. 



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